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May 12, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
May 12, 2006, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
I say I cannot leave for a day.
I I just cannot leave for a day.
It just gets it gets absurd.
You don't think it's an accident that USA Today runs that four-month-old New York Times story on the day I'm out of town in Dallas, do you?
It's absurd.
Yes, we're going to talk about that.
Lots of other things too.
It's Friday, folks, so uh hit it, uh Old Amont.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Great to be back with you, ladies and gentlemen.
Here we are, the uh massive secure EIB broadcast complex here at the EIB Southern Command.
Heavily bunkered, heavily secured and protected.
Super secret location.
Great to have you with us on Open Line Friday.
Here's the telephone number, 800-282-2882, and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
A hearty welcome to those of you watching uh the program today as uh members at Rush 24 7 uh watching on the uh Ditto Cam.
You know Open Line Friday, uh Monday through Thursday, it's all about what interests me.
On Friday when we go to the phones, it's your show.
You can discuss whatever.
You can call and be critical, you can call with a question, you can call with praise.
Uh and on Friday, you don't even have to worry about making a host look good.
Uh that's a rule we have on Thursday.
We even suspend that on uh Friday.
Had a great time in Dallas last night, uh WBAP rush to Texas, it was, and it was uh about 2200 people in a Nokia Theater.
What an just a nice place.
It's a huge entertainment complex uh that that uh uh they've built down there.
Just it was I'm I saw it out the window flying in, and and I uh I was stunned.
Uh it's just a great venue, and the crowd, the audience was spectacular.
They had uh a number of Purple Heart winners uh from uh the I think Iraq and Afghanistan theaters that were in the audience last night, just a great bunch of people, and it was a benefit for the Scottish Rights Hospital down there, WBAP is uh heavily involved uh with them.
And I had a special treat uh, you know, before the uh before the curtain goes up and I go out there.
There's always these meet and greets backstage.
You you meet uh potential sponsors, existing sponsors, you meet uh you meet uh the you meet girls.
There's a girl following me around.
I it was cool.
In fact, funny thing, she actually works for us.
She's part of EIB network.
And the last time I saw her was uh was at the RR convention thing in uh in Washington back in uh whenever that was, March.
Early, I think it was March the third.
So um she was there.
A lot of a lot of people were there, but uh but but we're we're standing we're standing backstage, and she just is stalking me.
You know, I'm I'm I'm I'm funny now.
I'm don't want to I'm not gonna mention her name because I'm not trying to embarrass her.
She just followed me everywhere.
Everybody was following me too, but of course I noticed her.
Uh and even right, you know, Mark Davis out there introducing me, and right before it's time to go, she's standing right there.
Um and and uh I said, just looked at her, said you want to go out with me.
And everybody's mouth kind of fell open, as did hers.
I said, No, no, no.
Out there on the stage, said she was when I finished What do you mean, nice save?
I mean, there was nothing to save there.
Um and then when the when the when the program was over, she's just a beautiful redhead.
You know, when when the when the program was over, you know, I have my briefcase with me, but my security team holds the briefcase while I'm out on stage.
I don't take it out there with me.
That's the package, the nuclear football, all that stuff.
So when I come when I come from backstage, there's a there's a group of people waiting for me back there, and she's holding my briefcase.
Yes, she's holding my briefcase.
I said, Want to leave with me.
I said, No, are you leaving with you or something like that?
Great time.
Anyway, before I'm get I'm getting to it.
I'm getting to it, snerdily.
So it's a surprise.
At the meet and greet, a couple of Texas state legislators approached me.
Uh Dan Flynn from District 2 and Bill Zedler from District 96, and they had they had this.
They had this this big blue folder here.
I'm holding it up for those of you to see on the uh on the ditto cam.
So they presented me with a certificate signed by Governor Rick Perry and uh Roger Williams, the Secretary of State.
I am now an honorary Texan.
They made me an honorary Texan.
I love going to Texas.
Texans love being Texans.
And it's uh I've enjoyed it every time I have gone there.
Dear Mr. Limbaugh, it is my esteemed honor to, along with Governor Rick Perry and Secretary Roger Williams, recognize you as an honorary Texas citizen.
Please consider this a hearty welcome to Texas.
Uh and there's a couple other things in here, and they're there.
Well, your leadership, your dedication, exceptional efforts for conservative policy are certainly instrumental in earning this honor for you, and it's an honor for our great state as well.
You're an upstanding American and today an esteemed Texas citizen.
Thank you for your allegiance to conservatives and responsible policy.
May God bless you in the great state of Texas, signed Dan Flynn, State Representative, House District 2.
And then there's a um, there's no state income tax there, so I'm not worried about them taxing me.
This was not, this was not a uh quick thick in there, H.R. This was not a slimy effort to get another taxpayer on the rolls in Texas because there's no state income tax there.
Here's the here's the official proclamation.
I hold it up.
I don't know if you can see it because of the light in here being very bright.
But we'll find a way to uh get this posted on the website.
Um Bob Schomper and everybody at WPABAP were just fabulous.
A great time lesson.
I got back early too.
I got back at 1.30.
And uh that is that is early for me given given what's been going on the uh the past week.
So here we are.
I leave for a day, uh, ladies and gentlemen, and all hell breaks loose.
You know, I um I'm gonna ask you a question that I never thought that I would ask.
Here goes.
Do we need a bird flu pandemic to get ourselves back on track?
Do we need another terrorist attack to get us back on track?
Has the left and the drive by media so divided us, and actually they have it if you look at the polls, but they're trying.
Have they so devastated our institutions and diddled and deedled with our minds, focus group that split screened us into divisions that might reach a point of no return?
I mean, do we reach the point here where we need a reality check?
A reality so grim that we stop this pandemic of destructive politics.
A four-month-old story, a four-month-old leak in the New York Times gets re-leaked yesterday in USA Today, and it is consciously misportrayed as being something it is not by a female journalista who obviously seeks her own Pulitzer Prize.
And guess what?
Predictably saw our elected representatives elbow their way to the cameras, faking shock and awe.
They toss around words like illegal when it's totally legal.
In fact, Andy McCarthy, uh National Review Online has a great piece today, uh, parts of which I'm going to steal from him in just a moment.
You want to know who's really data mining you?
This program that was uh talked about the New York Times last December, December 23rd or 24th, USA Today simply rehashes it and tries to make it into something that it's not.
There's no data mining.
There's no listening into phone calls.
There's no names on any of these phone, no addresses or any of this.
It's absurd.
And you need to ask yourself a question.
Who is data mining you?
Do you think members of Congress, in order to get re-elected or data mining you, finding out how you send your money, spend your money and where you spend it, keeping track of everywhere you how many times you get letters from the RNC, the DNC, members of Congress wanting your support?
There are all kinds of people collecting data on you out there, far more data than this program at the NSA yesterday, the USA Today leaked, is collecting.
And they're tossing around words like, I wasn't briefed.
Well, I'm sorry, Congressman, if you weren't briefed, it's your fault.
The New York Times briefed the world on this back in December.
It got so bad that Dick Durbin complains he's out of the loop.
In the process, confesses he's too unimportant to be briefed, and probably admits he doesn't read the New York Times.
You got Pat Lahey going absolutely nuts holding USA Today up yesterday.
And of course the timing.
When I left the microphone day before yesterday, I wondered what would the left do to distort the hearings for a new leader of the CIA and bam all we find out.
The Liberal calendar struck again the week before Hayden's hearing, Shazam, a four-month old leak to the New York Times, we get leak version 2.0, a re-leak to the USA today.
So we have more comments on this.
We have audio sound bites from all of these cackling phonies that were making idiots of themselves yesterday.
Lots of other stuff in the stacks of stuff plus it's open line Friday.
Sit tight, we'll be back and continue right after this.
America's Anchorman back behind the golden EIB microphone, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you with us Open Line Friday, 800 282882.
All right, there were three phone companies involved in this in this invasion of everybody's privacy, right?
Let's see we got uh we got ATT, we have Verizon, and we have Bell South.
I am proud to say, ladies and gentlemen, I am a customer of all three.
And uh there one of these companies who's starting to irritate me, by the way, with uh with this we're just starting I'm not gonna say it doesn't matter which one.
But now that I have learned that these companies are actively participating with the government in an effort to keep this country secure, I am proudly going to maintain my service with all three.
Now what was that company that was the traitor and refused to help us in Quest Quest is the traitor company they refuse to help out on this, huh?
Well I don't have service with Quest anyway.
Well it does what?
Oh the go they said go to FISA first.
Well let me read to you how Nancy or Andy McCarthy portrays this.
He says big brother is watching you, collecting your names and addresses, mapping out your phone numbers and email addresses, making notes of your interests, paying close attention to how you spend your money, big brother folding these bits of information about you and millions upon millions of your fellow Americans, and you'd better be sitting down for this part, entering into searchable databases, and worse yet, it's using sophisticated computer programs to develop targeted strategies about how to deal with you in every aspect of your personal life.
What's that?
You think you already read about all that in a hyperventilating instant Pulitzer nominee report in Thursday's USA Today, nope dream on the hysterical USA story doesn't describe anything nearly that intrusive after all if you wade through all the layers of reporter Leslie Cauley's conscious misdirection,
including the silly observations about government failing to seek judicial warrants before obtaining non-private information for which government has never been required to get warrants by the way Andy McCarthy, a former U.S. attorney federal prosecutor you will learn that scrupulous measures were actually taken by the NSA and cooperating phone companies to withhold customer names, street addresses and other personal identifiers from the government.
No, I'm not talking about the big brother in the NSA or the big brother in the Oval Office.
I'm talking about the 535 big brothers and sisters in Congress getting elected to Congress hard worked only by every incumbent's dearest preoccupation remaining in Congress takes untold hours of dedicated labor by highly motivated staffs and party organizations takes the expertise of outside experts takes meticulous research into the predilections of likely voters and most of all it takes money.
Lots of money in modern American politics that requires a fair amount of data mining the very same bane of our existence that currently has the usual suspects in Congress posturing about whether President Bush should merely be impeached or drawn and quartered at high noon.
These self-styled champions of our liberties and our privacy are promising to turn the upcoming confirmation hearings of General Hayden into a fire fight over a wartime surveillance effort.
General Hayden of course is apparently helped design a lawful surveillance program and a lawful data mining system for the nefarious purpose of trying to keep us all alive.
His efforts respond to the challenge of a vicious enemy one that's killed massively assures us it's spending every waking moment scheming to do it again.
Hayden doesn't have anything on his plate nearly as important as getting members of Congress reelected His point with all this is that members of Congress do the kind of data mining that the NSA is not doing.
And parties do it.
And they're out there trying to collect all kinds of information on you that will give them a heads up into who you are, how you spend your money, what your various predilections are, and how they can best separate you from your money.
These phone records that the NSA has, anybody can get.
If you've ever watched Law and Order, CSI wherever, or any other program, you know that law enforcement can go get phone records from any phone company to track cell phone calls to find out who was where when they produce alibis or they produce suspicion, they produce guilt, any number of things.
The idea that this is some sort of secret stuff.
Have you run the numbers on what all this would take?
They're 300 million Americans.
Folks, how many of those Americans, how many of us do you think use the phone?
How many give me a conservative of the 300 million, how many, how many of them just give me a conservative guess?
200,000?
200 million, okay, 200 million Americans use the phone.
Okay, we know you can't, and 65% of Americans that use the phone use cell phones.
And they're using cell phones so much you can't you can't walk around without seeing somebody on their phone.
They're on their phone constantly.
Some people are on the phone when they're not on the phone.
They want you to think they're talking when they're not.
The cell phone is a new rate.
You can't drive down the street of seeing somebody in the in on the phone in their car.
Everywhere.
The reason I mention that is how much time per day does 200 million people spend, do 200 million people spend talking on the phone?
In let's let's say that everybody spends, let's just be conservative.
And let's say that 200,000 or 200 million Americans talk 30 minutes a day on the phone.
I'm I know Snertley doesn't think that, but we're just being conservative.
Because you have to fact I don't talk on the phone, so somebody using my 30 minutes, so we'll average it out.
Now, these numbers, by the way, come from a subscriber to my website, Gary Karsten.
So if you've got 200 million people talking 30 minutes a day, what you have is six billion talk minutes or 100 million talk hours.
Let's say businesses use the phone two hours a day.
100,000 businesses, another 12 million talk minutes or 200,000 talk hours.
Now we're at 10, or rather, a hundred million two hundred thousand talk hours per day.
Per day.
It would take four million one hundred and seventy-five thousand people at twenty-four hours a day to listen in on all of that.
And that's probably a low number.
Do we have that kind of workforce?
The point of this, even though these are ballpark numbers, uh, ladies and gentlemen, the idea that people are being listened in on, the president denied it yesterday.
The idea that people are being spied on, listen, it's physically impossible.
It simply isn't possible.
The collection of these records is probably no more than uh purpose is probably nothing more than creating a database for when something needs to be learned when other indicators pop up about who may be talking to who planning what.
You know, what's amazing about this to me is that before 9-11, we didn't connect the dots.
On 9-12, the nation started catcalling.
Why did we connect the dots?
They knew this and they knew that, but they weren't talking.
Why didn't they know that?
Why did Now this is why I say, do we need a bird flu pandemic or another terrorist attack to get us back in focus here?
All we're trying to do is connect the dots or being able to connect the dots if and when another attack is planned so that we can stop it.
Everybody's going actually, everybody's not going nuts because the Washington Post has a story today.
A majority of Americans initially support a controversial NSA program to collect information on phone calls made in the U.S. in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats.
It's the Washington Post ABC poll survey found that 63% of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44% who strongly endorsed the effort.
Another 35% said the program was unacceptable, which included 24% strongly objected to it.
Slightly larger majority, 66%, said they wouldn't be bothered if the NSA collected records of personal calls they had made.
So maybe we don't need this giant wake-up call.
Maybe maybe we just see another example here of the drive-by media driving by, lobbing a bunch of gunfire into the crowd, creating a panic.
And the only people there panicking are a bunch of Democrats and leftists who use every news story like this as an effort to attack the president to invest in the defeat of this country, uh, and to set the stage for potentially impeaching George W. Bush.
Gotta take a break here, folks.
Wish you didn't have to, but I do back in just a second.
Screams of sheer panic on the part of the left at the very mention of my name.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network open line Friday.
Going to get to your phone calls El Quico.
New York Times, December 23rd last year, a story by interestingly enough, James Risen.
who did the December 16th story on the first NSA leak.
The NSA has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the U.S. as part of the eavesdropping program, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's no warrant necessary for this.
The phone company doesn't need a warrant to get the information to bill you for the calls that you're making.
You don't need a warrant to have that sent to you in your bill every month.
You think that Well, no, I'm talking to the wrong people.
You people obviously get it, according to the latest polls.
I'm blathering here over nothing.
It's the drive-by media and the Democrats trying to make a big deal out of nothing by recycling an old story that nobody gave a damn much about when it first came out.
Well, that's right, Rush came out on Christmas Christmas Eve.
So what is that matter?
Left trying to get Christmas out of our way anyway, so they're probably not paying attention to Christmas.
They must have missed this.
December 18, 2005, Newsmax during the 1990s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program codenamed Echelon.
In fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic phone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 90s, all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9-11 attacks.
In February 2000, for instance, 60 Minutes uh correspondent Steve Croft introduced a report on the Clinton era spy program by noting this.
If you made a phone call today, if you sent an email to a friend, there's a good chance that what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency.
The top secret global surveillance network is called Echelon.
It's run by the National Security Agency.
NSA computers said Croft capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent twenty years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the NSA, told 60 Minutes the agency was monitoring everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.
What about those of you who have to cross bridges or on turnpikes use easy pass or one of these things that lets you go through without stopping at toll booth?
Do you know how you're being tracked?
You know they know who you are?
Of course you know that.
You use your internet web web browser.
Do you realize how many people out there have?
Uh your IP address.
It's no different than your phone number.
You think you're you think you're surfing the web in private, and nobody knows where you're going?
Every website you go to knows who you are by virtue of your number.
Says this is absurd.
There was no monitoring of calls, but it happened during the Clinton administration.
Nobody did anything about it, even after 60 minutes report.
Drive-by Media didn't care.
Oh, no, no, no, no, because Bill Clinton, why why he was he was interested in doing best thing he could do uh for the country.
Federal government ran a monthly budget surplus of one hundred and eighteen point eight five billion dollars in April as tax receipts came in stronger than the same period last year.
In fact, uh a flood of income tax payments pushed up government receipts to the second highest level in history in April, giving the country a sizable surplus for the month in its monthly accounting of the government's books.
Treasury department said Wednesday, revenue for the month totaled three hundred and fifteen point one billion as Americans filed their tax returns by the April deadline.
The gusher of tax revenue pushed total receipts up by thirteen point four percent from April of two thousand five.
Now a question, how can this happen?
How can this happen when we had tax cuts?
How can it possibly happen when we've had tax cuts, ladies and gentlemen?
Well, it happens because of the way we've always told you it happens.
Tax cuts produce more revenue because they create more jobs equaling more taxpayers.
And more taxpayers contribute more tax revenue while the aggregate tax payment per person comes down.
Works every time it's tried.
If the top rate that you're reducing uh is not too low, I mean you reach a point where you know you're not going to raise revenue if your tax rate's zero, but there's a formula for this, but it obviously worked, especially with capital gains coming down to 15 percent.
I have this leads me to another question.
Uh what do liberals hate more than our president?
And I'll give you a hint, it's one word.
And I'll give I'll give you another hint begins with R. No, it's not Rush.
It's not it's not it's it's not me.
It has seven letters.
Liberals hate more than our president.
One word begins with R has seven letters.
Don't don't bother figuring it out.
I'll tell you what liberals hate more than our president and more than me is reality.
The tax cuts worked.
And according to today's media, Wall Street Journal and others, they worked better than advertised.
And yet only 15 Democrats in the House broke ranks with Pelosi and supported the extension of these tax cuts.
Only three in the Senate.
Only three Democrats broke ranks and uh supported the extension.
Despite the evidence, the Liberal rally and cries still the class warfare cry.
Tax cuts favor the rich.
Turns out that tax cuts favor the economy.
Tax cuts favor the employment figures.
Tax cuts work.
Reality sets in, what are the left gonna do but try to continually rewrite history?
You know how they're doing it?
ABC sent one of their good morning America reporterettes out there to some mall.
We got the audio of this coming up.
Name is Kate Snow.
They sent her out there and with a waving a $20 bill, claiming this $70 billion tax cut would only represent a $20 tax cut to the kind of people that run around in the malls.
And then they went out and they found a Democrat who just conveniently was able to mouth Democrat talking points.
Yes, but these tax cats only favor the rich.
I swear, folks, that tax cuts favor the country and they favor the economy.
Let me give you a hint.
If you're gonna get a tax cut, you have to be paying taxes.
And the more in taxes you pay, the bigger your tax cuts going to be.
It's not a hard mathematical comp uh uh calculation to make.
But if you're not paying many taxes to begin with, you're not gonna get a huge tax cut, and we know you can go to my website.
This uh the statistics are always there.
You can take a look at who's paying the lion's share of taxes in this country.
And you'll it's impossible to not have those people get a tax cut if you're gonna have a tax cut.
All right.
Steve in Philadelphia, I'm glad you called your up first on open line Friday.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
I think you uh got it wrong.
You said that this was a re-leak, and I don't think so because the first leak, the president said uh that it was only calls to or from Al Qaeda overseas.
And this is tens of millions of Americans, so I think you're talking about two different programs.
No, no, no, no.
No, I'm saying but with the this this story was leaked.
The story Was first reported last December in the New York Times.
This was brought out yesterday to conveniently try to throw off the confirmation hearings of uh General Hayden.
But it's an old story.
I'm saying this is a different story.
But it's important.
It's not.
Oh, uh I I don't understand then, because the president said he was only tracking Al-Qaeda calls to or from countries overseas.
And now this is tens of millions of Americans.
Isn't that different?
Yeah, let me.
We're talking apples and oranges.
Let me try to explain this.
In the first place, USA Today's story yesterday is an old story.
It was originally published by the uh New York Times in December, and I just read from that story moments ago in December of 2005.
Same story, USA Today rehashes it and adds a bunch of things to it that are not true, and the writer consciously misreported a bunch of things had to be the case.
Now, as to whether this is different than what the president said, the president said that we are going to monitor phone calls going into and out of the country involving known Al-Qaeda suspects.
In order to be able to do that, I think you have to have a database of phone numbers in this country so that if you find an Al-Qaeda guy making a phone call into the country, that number, you can go find whose number is this and where is that number and so forth.
I don't think there's no spying of Americans going on in this program.
It's no di how I don't you you look at the records that the government has, and they're no different than your monthly phone records.
How is that spying on you?
Well, there's a couple of issues.
I mean, there there is that Al-Qaeda issue, but you know, if all it is is numbers and there's no names attached, what good is it?
You can't throw a number in jail.
I'll tell you, Russ, I don't want a KGB in the USA.
We don't have one.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes, we do.
It's called a drive-by media.
If we have if we have a force in this country trying to divide us and spy on us and mislead us and give us propaganda, it's the drive-by media, the closest thing to the KGB that I can name.
Uh the see, you can't put a number in jail, sir.
If a number pops up in a phone call to or from a known Al-Qaeda member, and that number happens to be in the database, at that point a warrant will be issued and a name will be procured and the law will be followed.
This is no time to panic.
This is a time to learn about the law and a time to learn about your government and a time to learn what's really going on here.
And the best lesson I can give you if whenever you see a story about the NSA or George W. Bush or spying or prisons or torture in the drive-by media, plan on the opposite being true.
All right, uh, Old Amont standby for the audio sound bites starting from the top.
Um I don't know.
I sometimes I get a little frustrated here.
This doesn't seem that difficult to understand to me.
Uh, but then again, I'm I don't get up every day in a full rage boiling over with hatred.
But it's obvious that the Al-Qaeda phone calls in and out and this program of collecting data on Americans and their phone calls and so forth are two different programs.
In the first place, it would it, I just detailed it was it's folks, it is simply humanly impossible to listen in on every phone call every day in this country.
It just couldn't be done.
Now, in the Al-Qaeda situation, the NSA is watching all calls coming to and from overseas phone numbers that have been identified as being connected to terrorism.
By the way, if I'm Al-Qaeda, I go out and sign up with Quest today.
I go out and get myself a bunch of Quest accounts.
Thank you.
USA Today.
So you you've got a program that monitors phone calls in and out of the country from known Al-Qaeda numbers.
This, this, my friends, is the domestic spying program, a contemptible lie that the drive-by media keeps talking about.
And uh by the way, there's no warrant necessary for the Al-Qaeda program because of the overseas uh aspect of this.
The other program that USA Today recycled from the New York Times Is a database of information that is publicly available.
There's no spying going on.
Zip zero nada.
But as I said, if you identify a terrorist in the future via the phone number and he's making calls into and out of the country, and he find out he's making a call to X number, you've got that number in the database, and you can go find out who he's talking to.
It's to keep the country safe for crying out loud.
It's not hard to understand, but but here again, listen to this little montage, and we could have made this montage ten times as long as it is.
Ten times longer.
A drive-by media montage yesterday.
Well, I, of course, wasn't here to deal with this on the day of the tsunami of panic.
The government has collected the phone records of millions of Americans.
Millions of Americans' phone records are being tracked.
This directly affects millions of ordinary Americans.
The companies that provided the government with the phone records of millions of their customers.
The telephone records of tens of millions of American citizens.
The phone activity of tens of millions of Americans.
Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved?
The NSA has collected phone records of tens of millions of Americans.
That's enough.
That's enough.
The thing goes on for a full minute.
Don't need to hear it because that's all they said.
Tens of millions.
Phone records of tens of millions.
Leaky Leahy, Pat Leahy went nuts.
He waved USA Today around.
He praised the drive-by media for alerting Democrats to the program that they already knew about.
Bring it on, Democrats.
Bring it on, Senator Leahy.
Let's have the debate on the Al-Qaeda Bill of Rights that you have been seeking all along.
Here is what Senator Leahy had to say.
Look at this headline.
The press is doing our work for us, and we should be ashamed of it.
Shame on it.
Stop the tape.
Stop the tape.
It was in the New York Times four months ago, Senator.
And being so far behind and being so willing to rubber stamp anything this administration does.
Only through the press will be begin to learn the truth.
The secret collection of phone call records tens of millions of Americans.
Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with Al Qaeda?
If that's the case, we've really failed in any kind of a war on terror.
That is just simply embarrassing.
It is embarrassing that some...
He knows better than this.
He knows these are two different programs.
He knows, ladies and gentlemen, that this is not private information.
Maybe it should be.
I mean, but it's not.
It's it can't possibly, you know from your own life experiences.
Your phone records are not private information.
So, Senator, it was in the New York Times four months ago.
Real leaders of the Senate were filled in.
Why didn't they tell you?
The Supreme Court's ruled on this.
We have been the NSA has been doing this kind of thing since it was set up in the 60s or 70s.
Whenever it was set up, they've been they've been doing things like this since they started.
And two-thirds of the American people support this, Senator.
Uh press is doing our work for us.
That's exactly right.
The press is doing the drive-by media is doing the work that you Democrats would love to do.
Senator, why don't you just come out and tell us?
Why not just be honest?
You want to set up an Al-Qaeda Bill of Rights.
You want to sabotage any effort we make to defeat this enemy.
Here's Diane Feinstein, by the way, at the Senate judiciary hearing on uh on all this.
I happen to believe we're on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees of unreasonable search and seizure.
And I think this is also going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation of General Hayden, and I think that is very regretted.
Yeah, uh well, the program doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment uh, Senator, and the effort here to impede the confirmation of General Hayden is precisely what this story's purpose was yesterday.
And of course, you're falling for it, hook line in the sinker.
Back in just a second, folks.
You know how ridiculous this is, folks.
This is tantamount to saying that the NSA would need a warrant to read The phone book.
There are phone books with your address, your phone number.
Not cell phones, but your landline.
They need a warrant to read the phone book.
Do you know that anyone can go to the website of the property appraiser in your county and they can find the address of your home?
And they can find out what you paid for it.
They can find out what your property taxes are.
And then with Google, you can zero in via satellite photo to see your house.
Do it all on your website.
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