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May 22, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:14
May 22, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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Hi, how are you?
Welcome back, folks.
You're tuned to the most listened to radio talk show in America.
There's a good reason for that.
It's the best one.
The Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Taking your calls today at 800-282-2882.
Email address, rush at EIBnet.com.
Back to the first hour of this program today.
A little over two hours ago, about two hours ago, I said, quoted Bill Clinton saying that global warming is a bigger threat to the future than terrorism is.
And I found that quite interesting because he's paralleling Al Gore.
Al Gore's out there trying to make that same case.
And there's a lot of rumblings out there that Al Gore is going to get back into the Democratic presidential sweepstakes, made a lot of money as a director of Google, lots of stocks, sold some stock, maybe $50, $60 million worth, and as such, has enough money to sink into a campaign.
Another story out there, Hollywood all excited about the possibility.
So what is the potential first man, Bill Clinton, doing, parroting and thereby promoting and supporting a policy that's going to be the linchpin of any candidacy of Al Gore?
And then I made the observation: if global warming is that big a threat, then why didn't he go after global warming with the Kyoto Protocol?
Why didn't he try to sell everybody in this country on it?
Why didn't he try to sell his own party on it?
And then I said, I'll bet you if we do a Nexus search, we will be able to find Bill Clinton saying that terrorism is a bigger threat to the future than anything else out there.
And lo and behold, ladies and gentlemen, after two hours of exhausting research on the Nexus database, we have a story from January 1, 2000 in the Buffalo News.
And the headline of the story, we must formulate a plan to deal with terrorists.
I guess that this is an editorial.
And let me just read to you this paragraph.
The U.S. government has strongly condemned the hijacking and the holding of passengers as hostage.
Remember, this is 2000, just before 9-11.
The U.S. government strongly condemned the hijacking and the holding of passengers as hostages.
President Clinton has warned that the greatest threat to the free world in the new millennium will come from international terrorism.
This ordeal once again emphasizes the U.S. and India must forge closer ties on every level.
So there you have it.
Bill Clinton has said that the greatest threat to the free world in the new millennium, and that's what we're in now for those of you in Rio Linda, will come from international terrorism.
Now, six years later, Bill Clinton says the greatest threat is global warming, even bigger than international terrorism.
Typical Clinton politics.
I hate to say this, folks, but Jimmy Carter has a piece today, John Fund writing about Jimmy Carter in the opinionjournal.com website, and his headline, Jimmy Carter's right, amend the immigration bill to require voters to show ID.
Do you know when you poll this issue, and I know what we say about polls here, and I'm dubious of them all, but this one doesn't surprise me.
7% of the American people, that's it.
7% of the American people think it's okay to not have photo ID when you vote.
Only 7%.
Yet the Democratic Party is steadfastly against it.
They say it's racist.
They say it is discriminatory because some of their voters are afraid to go get their photos taken for fear that their picture may be on a wall in a post office or for fear that they're going to be spied on or some such thing.
Democrats admitting that many of their voters are just fools, idiots, just plain stupid.
But we still can't discriminate against them.
Jimmy Carter's out there saying, of course, Jimmy Carter knows this stuff, folks, because he monitors elections nationwide.
And, I mean, worldwide.
So occasionally these people get something right.
And when they do, you have to call attention to it.
Now, I want to go back to Lindsey Graham.
Can you grab Cut 8?
Here's Lindsey Graham being asked by Tim Russert yesterday: this is sort of debating the future of the Republican Party, isn't it?
This immigration bill?
I mean, you believe that states like swing states could go Democratic if Hispanic voters are angry at the Republicans.
Yes, I believe it's deeper than that.
I believe that we've got a fast-growing demographic.
I want to send the right signal to one, you're welcome to be part of this party.
You're welcome to be in America under conditions that make sense, and you have to earn your way to become a citizen over 11 years.
It's not about the next election.
What Republicans need to get away from is fear of the next election and do things that are good for the country down the road.
Okay, the Washington Post has a story today.
And by the way, back to Bill Clinton for just a second.
What happened to AIDS?
I mean, I thought AIDS was the greatest threat we faced.
And in fact, I thought Clinton recently said obesity was the biggest threat we faced.
Childhood obesity.
We got to get soft drinks out of the screws.
I mean, the guy is playing whatever string on the guitar he can strum.
No pun intended.
And now he's supporting Al Gore in this global warming sham.
I find it fascinating.
You know, there's a school of thought out there that believes Bill does not want Hillary to become president.
He wants that historical legacy reserved for just him.
And I know it's just idle speculation because it's who these people are, that the Clintons are, that the people speculating that Bill would actually at the right time sabotage Hillary's campaign.
And I tell you, it's weird when he, this is the week at Al Gore's idiotic movie comes out on global warming.
And here's Clinton, for all intents and purposes, endorsing the whole concept.
Anyway, this Washington Post poll, you just heard Lindsey Graham say, yep, well, we got to stop worrying about the next election.
There's a new demographic out there, and we got to tell them that they're welcome in this party.
We see how the Senate has been trying to do it, and we see how the administration, frankly, has been trying to show Hispanics that we Republicans, we embrace you.
We want you in our party.
So Hispanic voters, many of whom responded favorably to President Bush's campaign appeals, emphasizing patriotism, family, and religious values in Spanish language media in 2004, are turning away from the administration on immigration and a host of other issues, according to a new survey.
At the same time, separate polls show that conservative white Republicans are the voting group most hostile to the administration's support for policies that would move toward the legalization of many undocumented immigrants.
They had to go gum it up with this.
No, we're down.
We're back.
This is racism and xenophobia at the heart of the immigration or the anti-illegal immigrant debate.
It's just preposterous.
Cumulatively, the Post says the data underscore the perils for Bush and his party in the immigration debate churning on Capitol Hill, one that threatens to bleed away support simultaneously from the Republican base and from Hispanic swing voters whom Bush strategists had hoped to make an important new part of the GOP coalition.
A survey of 800 registered Hispanic voters conducted May 11th through 15th by the nonpartisan Latino Coalition.
I see nonpartisan in there.
I don't care who they are.
I immediately, the red flags go up.
A nonpartisan polling unit, right, called the Latino Coalition.
Why would you be nonpartisan if you're going to form the Latino coalition?
That's like saying we're a bunch of Latinos and we got the Latino coalition, but we don't care about anything.
And that didn't say bipartisan, which means we got pro and con, you know, up and down, left and right, forwards, backwards, whatever in our group.
No, they said nonpartisan.
So when I see that, it's almost a disqualifier because I don't think there's such a thing non-partisan in issues such as this, among people that are paying attention and have a stake.
But nevertheless, here are the results.
800 registered Hispanic voters, May 11th through 15th, show that Democrats were viewed as better able to handle immigration issues than Republicans by nearly three to one, 50% to 17%.
Pitting the Democrats against Bush on immigration issues produced a two-to-one Democrat advantage, 45 to 22.
The poll findings indicate that the Republicans are likely to have a hard time replicating Bush's 2004 performance among Latino voters.
According to 2004 exit polls, Bush received the backing of 40% of Hispanic voters from 34% in 2000.
So it looks like the immigration plan that is identified with the president and the Republicans in the Senate is not working its magic.
And yeah, just from a political standpoint, I had to wonder what, you know, this is a big risk for the president to take to go out and do this immigration speech here in this election year, that Monday, a week ago tonight, and really just focus everybody's attention on the issue, call attention to it, and then all of this brouhaha and fighting that's going on, people paying much closer attention to it than they otherwise would have.
And I thought the risks are far greater on the downside of this thing than they are on the upside.
It looks like that's the case.
So not only is it not working with the persuasion of moderate Hispanics or others to join the Republican Party, it appears to be hurting the Republican base support for the president and the Republican Party as well, which we all know.
Back in just a sec.
Mambo number five.
What was this guy's name?
Oh, that's right, Lou Bega.
That's right.
Mambo number five.
We are back.
All right, one more immigration story, folks, and we'll on to other things in your phone calls.
Among those, who will be cleared of past crimes under the Senate's proposed immigration reform bill would be the businesses that have employed the estimated 10 million illegal aliens eligible for citizenship and that provided the very magnet that drew them here in the first place.
Buried in the more than 600 pages of legislation is a section that is titled Employer Protections.
And it says this, quote, employers of aliens applying for adjustment of status under this section shall not be subject to civil and criminal tax liability relating directly to the employment of such alien.
Lawyers for the Senate Judiciary Committee have scoured the bill.
They've come up with a list of 31 crimes relating to illegal immigration that would be wiped clean under current law.
Simply entering the country illegally can result in a six-month prison stay and a $250,000 fine.
Aiding in that crime carries a similar fine and a five-year prison sentence.
Once ordered deported and illegal racks up $500 per day of continued illegal presence.
That's the law currently on the books.
That Lindsey Graham said, well, that's an unjust law.
These are nonviolent crimes, and enforcing that law doesn't make any sense.
In addition, there are the perjury and false statements associated with fraudulently filling out federal tax forms.
Each instance carries up to a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
Then there's the wide array of crimes relating to forging false documents needed to obtain work.
Punishment for those crimes range from civil fines to 25 years in the big house.
Also, there are crimes relating to the misuse of social security numbers to obtain work.
Those crimes can result in five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
And I have to ask how many people have been fined something and have served some jail time when they've been caught doing it.
Businesses that have committed any alien hiring crimes would be forgiven under the provisions of the bill, although the laws would remain on the books, and thus future violations could be prosecuted.
For what purpose?
So, and folks, this is not amnesty now.
Do not confuse yourselves.
This is not amnesty.
We're going to leave the laws on the books.
But for the current crop that's here and the current crop of businesses that have acted as the magnet, the story says, we're just going to pretend the law doesn't apply.
Has it applied for the last, well, since Simpson was only 20 years, but we're going to keep that law in the books and we're going to be tough on our immigration problem.
It's just absurd.
It is inexplicable.
And it gets more so each and every day.
Ian in Provo, Utah.
Welcome, sir.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Thanks, Rush.
Greetings from Provo.
Thank you.
Hey, I mentioned to your screener that, you know, a lot of this immigration stuff is kind of irksome to me just because I'm actually first-generation American.
And I mentioned maybe it doesn't apply to me because I'm actually the son of immigrant WASPs.
You know, my parents were born and bred in England and came here in the early 1960s.
Born and bred where?
In England.
England.
And they were green card-carrying people until the day they died two years ago.
And, you know, this whole thing about giving the illegal Social Security status is just incredible.
And I thought in my wicked little mind as I was waiting to talk to you, maybe the Senate can pacify people like me by maybe giving me my parents Social Security that they would have earned over the next several years of their life to help you know restore the dignity to their legally coming into this country.
And it sounds good.
I mean, it's a pie in the sky.
Not going to happen.
Well, obviously, but you know, they're playing the game.
They're playing with the money.
They're playing with the votes.
Why not just add some more to it?
Well, I mean, these guys have to practice restraint somewhere.
Yeah.
And the restraint that they're practicing is unlegals.
The other thing I mentioned to your screen was John McCain was actually in Utah a week or so ago at our state party convention of which I was a delegate to.
And he didn't say anything.
It was just, you know, the usual, you know, his Vietnam-era service in the military.
But I was telling your screener, I can almost guarantee you that if he had said the comments that you had mentioned earlier in that convention, he may not have gotten booed, but I bet you would have been dead quiet if not a lot of jaws dropping to the ground had he said those comments that you had mentioned earlier.
So it's just kind of amazing that I know.
See, that's a great point because these guys can say these things in Washington on the floor of the Senate, have it reported by the drive-by media.
But it's a lot different going out and looking people in the face and saying this.
It's easy to go on a Sunday show and say it than it is to go out to a personal appearance and say it.
So McCain's been in the news for other things, too.
He did his commencement address at the new school.
The new school's here in New York, and the new school's commandant of the new school is Bob Kerry, former senator from Nebraska.
And I mean, he's, I mean, McCain was booed, and he was, they couldn't believe he was there.
He supported Bush on the war in Iraq and so forth.
And McCain basically said the same thing to them that he said down at Liberty University when he went out of Falwell's group and did the commencement speech there.
And he said, keep speaking for what you believe.
We need the debate in this country.
Keep going and keep speaking.
When I was in your shoes and blah, So, you know, he's back to, you know, trying to maneuver in the center and regain Maverick status.
And I love this, the right to debate.
I mean, I think we get caught up here in the romance of this notion of dissent.
But somebody's right and somebody's wrong.
In most debates, somebody's right, somebody's wrong.
And at some point, somebody would stand up and say, say whatever you want, but I'm going to tell you, you are flat wrong.
And here's why you're flat wrong.
Instead of go ahead and speak, speak and speak louder.
I mean, we all have to speak.
I speak a lot myself.
Speak.
Whoopi-doo.
I mean, it's meaningless platitudes.
Here's the one guy in this country, along with his buddy Feingold, who's actually, you know, cut a little portion of the First Amendment out with McCain Feingold now talking.
You keep talking.
I love dissent.
What McCain knows is that they can't put it in an ad 30 days or 60 days before an election.
They can say all they want when he's at the commencement speech hall and all this.
But I mean, somebody's right and somebody's wrong.
I mean, you all have a right to be wrong.
We all have a right to be right.
We don't have a right to be heard, however.
We have a right to speak, but nobody has to listen to us.
That has to be earned.
But, I mean, the idea here that you can continue along with this and you don't tell people they're wrong when you know they are or think they are in order not to offend them or bother them or what have you doesn't seem to advance anything to me, particularly if you happen to stay.
If McCain really believes in the Iraq War, really believes in supporting it, then stand there and tell them why and tell them why they're wrong and what they misunderstand it.
Because I'll tell you, the opponents of the Iraq war are so kooky, none of what they believe about it is actually true.
Somebody ought to just tell them this.
Other than me.
That's right, my friends, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have El Rushbow, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned, all everything.
Maha Rushi here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A case that we have been following, a story we've been following since five days after the floods in New Orleans brought on by Hurricane Katrina, the saga of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana.
We first encountered Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, when he commandeered escape vehicles being manned by U.S. military personnel.
They drove him to his front door in his house, a fashionable neighborhood of New Orleans, where the water was up to the third step of his front stoop.
And they delivered him right to that third step so the congressman wouldn't get wet.
He walked in the house.
He was in there for about an hour.
He came back.
This is while rescue operations were still in full-fledged activity throughout the New Orleans and Mississippi areas.
Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, inside his home for about an hour, came out with a number of items, including something about the size of a microwave oven or a small refrigerator.
In the time that he arrived at his fashionable home in New Orleans, the original rescue vehicle got stuck.
It waited so long out there, it sunk in the muck underneath the surface of the water.
This necessitated calling a rescue vehicle to rescue Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, because the original vehicle was stuck and couldn't get out.
This took more personnel and another vehicle out of rescue service.
We since learned that Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, has been accused of taking bribes for the purposes of setting his family and himself up for untold riches working on telephone deals in Nigeria or some such African country.
Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, has denied all charges.
Well, now there's a new development out there, folks.
Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, was caught on videotape accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose conversations with Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, also were recorded, according to a court document released Sunday.
Agents later found the cash hidden in his freezer.
Hard, cold cash.
People are now wondering if this is the same cash that Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, asked rescue personnel to take him to his fashionable home in New Orleans five days after Hurricane Katrina to get.
Is it that that he removed from his house along with other items?
At one audio tape meeting, Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa.
As Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, and the informant passed notes about what percentage the lawmaker's family might get, Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, began laughing and said, all these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking as if the FBI is watching.
This according to the affidavit.
Jefferson, who represents New Orleans, has not been charged and he denies any wrongdoing.
He's not going to plead guilty to something he didn't do.
And the facts of this, he says, have been terribly, terribly misreported and are out of context.
As for the $100,000, the government says that Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, got the money in a leather briefcase last July 30th at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington.
The plan was for Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, to use the cash to bribe a high-ranking Nigerian official.
The name is blacked out in the court document to ensure the success of a business deal in that country.
All but $10,000 was recovered on August 3rd when the FBI searched the home of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana in Washington.
They searched his Washington home.
The money was stuffed in his freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers and aluminum foil.
So that's the latest on the saga of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana.
Here is John in St. Louis.
John, I'm glad you called.
Welcome.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, it's great to be here.
Thank you.
An honor to talk to you, and I hope you're having a great afternoon.
Thank you, sir.
I will.
You were discussing the DNC's operations against Nagan in New Orleans in his last election this Saturday.
That's true.
And, well, you know, I saw that report, too, on the Drudge Report.
He just sources, you know, I mean, it's not really, he's not linking to anything.
It just seems like a rumor, kind of a drive-by kind of move here on the edge.
Oh, very clever, John.
It is what it is.
But, you know, Nagan is kind of a lukewarm Democrat at best, and he's kind of new to the party, and he's had some flirtations with the Republican Party.
He supported Jindal against Blanco.
Right.
And he endorsed Bush in 2000.
And he didn't come out in 04 for Kerry until after the convention.
Yeah, but he still came out for him.
Yeah, okay.
But I'm just saying, okay, yeah.
As far as we know, the DNC is supporting him in his race.
But you ascribe nefarious actions on their part when it's not necessarily confirmed.
And even if it were, he does have not such a great past.
Okay, so what you're saying is that even if this drive-by report on Drudge is true, Nagan still had it coming.
Well, I'm not even saying that.
I'm just saying it's politics.
And I think that if the RNC had a candidate in his state that gave money to Democrats or endorsed Democrats, I don't think Ken Melman would get on his plane and fly over and help him either.
I mean, it's what's fair is fair.
It's politics.
I can name one for you, Arlen Spector.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
He doesn't need to give money to Democrats.
He might, but I mean, he supports.
But look, the point is, what's interesting to me about this is that you have the report.
There was a report on a blog, John, an absolute bogus report on a blog that said Carl Rove had been indicted secretly and privately two Fridays ago.
35 drive-by media reporters called Rove's lawyer asking for comment.
Is it true?
Here we have a report on the Drudge Report that Nagan was dissed by the DNC, that they wanted Mitch Landrew to win, and we know why.
And there's no curiosity about this.
None.
In fact, if there's any curiosity at all, so, oh, well, you know, Nagan is a turncoat, voted, supported Jindal.
He acted a lean Republican in a couple of ways, endorsed Bush in 2000.
No big deal.
A DNC wouldn't support him.
But the point is, he's black.
New Orleans is a chocolate city.
And New Orleans is a city that the Democrats desperately want to hold and so forth.
And Nagan's victory came from white voters.
And the Democrats are out there.
They're trying to hold this city under their control so that—and Nagin still is a Democrat, regardless.
I mean, even if he has flirted with supporting some Republicans, all I'm saying to you is, if the situation had been reversed, and if it were the RNC, which had dissed a black candidate and sought to undermine him, even a Republican, over preferring a white guy, you would have not heard the end of it.
It would be the focus of the news today, tomorrow, and the next day.
And you'd be wondering if Pat Robertson had a role in it.
You never know why they come up with all these various angles.
There's not a shred, there's not an ounce of curiosity that we can detect by drive-by media reports over what's on the Drudge Report.
And yet this blog that got this Rove BS started has nowhere near the credibility.
I mean, it has no credibility.
To compare it to any other website is absolutely absurd.
Who's next on this program?
Mike in Miami.
Welcome to the program, sir.
You are next.
My God, alligator biting ditto from Miami.
Thank you, sir.
Pleasure to talk to you.
You bet.
I want to talk about the math involved.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
Hold, ho, ho, ho.
Did you say alligator biting or fighting?
Fighting, fighting.
I'm in the Everglades.
Oh, the alligators.
You're not biting alligator.
No.
But my question revolves around the math that's involved in all of this.
My question was, how many new naturalization and citizenship agents are being added in this legislation to process the 12 to 20 million applications that are going to come in from illegals, in addition to the millions of legal residents that are going to be needed to process if there's this new fabulous question.
We asked that question when we first heard months ago or weeks ago, maybe a couple of months, this particular compromise bill.
The first question we asked, go out there now to one of these naturalization centers and see how smoothly it operates.
It's like the DMV, only worse.
Can you imagine where are we going to get the people to process all of a sudden these 11 to 12?
Because remember what they had to do.
They have to turn themselves in, have to admit when they've been here under two years or longer than two years, longer than five, they got to stay under two, they got to go.
They got to come in.
They got to admit that.
They got to pay the fine.
They got to promise to go to English school.
Who's going to come, if they don't come in and admit it, and how many of them are going to think it's a trick in the first place?
If they don't come in and admit it, who's going to go out there and find them?
Yeah, we got, that's an excellent question because with no enforcement mechanism and even no enforcement of the provisions of this new law, what good is any of it?
And as Vice President Graham said, the law is nonviolent crime, not hurting anybody.
If it's an unjust result, then the law is, you know, it doesn't deserve to be enforced or followed or this sort of thing.
But no, that's an excellent point.
Where are we going to get the additional bureaucrats?
Maybe from the TSA, the airline screeners.
Pay them overtime.
Back after this.
Stay with us.
Well, the Democrats getting all excited.
Campaign season heating up.
John Edwards, the Breck girl, was on this week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday.
Steph, he said, you've also said the president's the worst president of our lifetime, worse even than Richard Nixon.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
What has President Bush done that is worse than the crimes and the cover-ups of Watergate?
Well, he's done a variety of things, things which are going to take us forever to recover from.
The damage that he's done to the way America is viewed in the world, the lack of respect for America and the world, what the ongoing conflict in Iraq is doing to America's image, his response to this hurricane on the Gulf Coast, which I think is part of a pattern of incompetence.
You know, I keep hearing everybody tells me just how smart this guy is, but I think he needs a dunce hat.
There is literally not one original syllable.
This is kookville talking points.
And it's also absurd.
He's done a variety of things.
He was asked about high crimes and misdemeanors like Watergate.
Well, he's done a variety of things.
They're going to take us forever to recover from the damage he's done to the way America is viewed in the world, a lack of respect for America.
It's BS.
And I don't even think he's got the sense to know it.
Recover from this.
We're not going to have to recover from this.
The people he's worried about are a bunch of socialist elites in Europe who couldn't defend themselves if an alligator was attacking them.
And so they come around, they cry and they whine and they moan about the United States.
And all we'd have to do to get them back on our side is get a Democrat back in the White House, let the UN have whatever it wants that we've got, and let these Europeans start fleecing the United States, start giving them money and giving them aid and so forth, and they will love us as though we are their own child.
It is just, you know, Mr. Brett Girl, you're going to have to do better.
And if you're really serious about reviving a political career, it's embarrassingly, disappointingly sad and pathetic.
I mean, it's a horrible performance.
This guy's got to, somebody's going to take him to TV show school.
All right.
We reported this last week.
Brian Ross, investigative reporter, ABC, has been told by an unnamed source that the federal government, the CIA, somebody, FBI, knew who he was talking to.
They were monitoring his phone calls.
On CNN's reliable source yesterday, Howard Kurtz talks to Brian Ross, says, what is your reaction that law enforcement officials are analyzing the numbers that you dial in an effort to track down your confidential sources?
Abstract way, I always thought that was likely or possible, but once I actually heard this specific information, and this person knew a couple of specific calls, it was truly alarming and made you think, well, my gosh, what are we going to do about this?
I mean, it means a lot more in-person visits.
Oh, no, don't tell me it's true.
You're going to have to get out of the office to do your investigative reporting?
No.
Why, what's becoming of investigating reporting?
In-person visit, got to actually go talk to these people?
Oh, no.
And then we have this exchange.
Kurt says, well, if sources are leaking classified information, which is illegal on their part, why shouldn't the government be able to investigate and track down which reporters they're talking to?
I think going after reporters' phone calls and phone records is a way of chilling and preventing us from doing our job.
And if you are chilling reporters, you're chilling the First Amendment.
And I think that the public's right to know in this case supersedes these issues.
If on their own they can figure it out, I think that's fair game in a way.
Going after our phone calls, tracking them.
We've received no notification formally from the phone companies or from the government that our records have been pulled.
If, in fact, they have done that and we don't know about it, that's very upsetting.
Now, I don't care if they get the information from us as long as they do it fair.
But they're not trying to chill reporters.
They're trying to chill these sources who are leaking things.
And then Alberto Gonzalez on this week with Stephanopoulos.
You believe journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information?
It depends on the circumstances.
There are some statutes on the book, which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility.
That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation.
We have an obligation to enforce those laws.
We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected.
Okay, no, it's a balancing act.
National security or not chill reporters, because that's chilling the First Amendment.
Now, the First Amendment's been plenty chilled.
Parts of the First Amendment are on ice.
It's called campaign finance reform.
And even more of the First Amendment is going to be put on ice because, you know, there was a loophole in campaign finance reform.
And it allowed the creation of these 527 organizations, the George Soros's TheMoveOn.orgs, and McCain and Feingle say, yeah, well, it's kind of slipped through us.
We didn't see that.
So they're making moves on now to tighten down those people's operations.
And they're just, it's like a hose.
Squeeze it one place, the water will go somewhere else.
They're never going to get the money out of politics, despite the fact that that's their objective and their claim.
Um, so first amendment's uh already been chilled, mr Ross uh, gotta go quick.
Time out, we'll be back in.
Just second, stay with us.
A programming note and reminder, uh, ladies and gentlemen, I will not be behind the golden EIB microphone tomorrow.
Mark Belling will be sitting in, will be back on wednesday from the EIB southern command.
Uh, and get it all revved up and started all over again.
It's great being with you today.
It's uh, it's been a hoot.
I love and appreciate the fact that you're there each and every day and look forward to it each day.
So, Wednesday's up next for me.
See you then.
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