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June 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
June 27, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #2
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How are you?
Rush Limbaugh back in the saddle at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I am America's real anchorman, America's truth detector, the Doctor of Democracy.
Here serving humanity with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
Looking forward to speaking to you as the program progresses this afternoon.
800-282-2882, if you'd like to be on the program, Mr. Snerdley screening calls.
You've been screening calls since when?
Last Friday, right?
Mr. Snerdledley.
Oh, you're having that much fun?
You can't keep track of how long you've been doing it, huh?
Yes, Bo Snerdley back in the call screener saddle.
He is.
He's one of the best that we have ever had.
But everybody gets promoted here.
It's not an emotion.
He's just filling in for others who are on vacation out of the country, presumably also having a great time, just as I did down in the Dominican Republic over the weekend.
What?
No, The people at Customs were nice as they could be.
They just didn't believe me when I told them that I got those pills at the Clinton Library gift shop.
And they told me at the Clinton Library gift shop that there was just blue M&Ms.
Customs didn't believe me when I told them that.
800-282-2882.
I know a lot of people don't even, I mean, don't need Viagra.
Just look at themselves in the mirror.
And the problem's taking many of them in Washington.
Many of them Republicans, too.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's a piece today by Virginia Buckingham.
She's a columnist at the Boston Herald.
And she echoes a sentiment and a theme that I have been advising many of you to adopt over these many years.
I know when libs, Democrats, drive-by media, do something outrageous, you say, we've got to fight back.
We've got to destroy these people.
We've got to take them out.
And I say, you know, I understand that emotion.
Understand the desire.
I mean, I've faced it professionally since 1988.
What to do with all these critics when they're being personally critical and it's unjustified and wrong and so forth.
And I've taken you through the lessons I learned about that.
And when it comes to issues or institutions that we hold dear and they're under assault or people seem to be over the edge, I've said, folks, let them speak up more.
Let them keep doing what they're doing.
Let them self-destruct.
Let them implode.
Let them illustrate to people exactly who they are.
One of the great things about the liberals today is despite their efforts to keep who they are hidden, they are failing at this.
Not when Merthyr runs around saying that the United States poses a top threat to world peace.
You know, the liberals, they're having these Democrats having these meetings behind closed doors to come up with their agenda.
And of course, the reason you have a meeting to come up with the agenda is because you want to put out a phony agenda that doesn't really represent what you think, but will sell nevertheless.
Well, in the process of trying to keep the agenda secret, there are enough people on the left in the Democratic Party and in the drive-by media that are going out there and telling the world who they are.
The New York Times has made it perfectly clear that they are not interested in U.S. national security at all.
I have told you people, I have warned you several times, that there is an ongoing effort by many on the left to sabotage victory over this particular enemy.
Documented it.
The New York Times here actually acting as though terror cells and people that have these terrorist safe houses and al-Qaeda members are their most valued subscribers.
They're doing more to inform those people of what we're doing to try to find anything out about them than anybody in the world is.
The New York Times is a greater source of intelligence for al-Qaeda than they probably have themselves.
Well, the world sees this, and the country sees this.
You got Peter King out there saying, these people need to be tried for treason.
You know, freedom of the press does not extend beyond all common sense.
When it comes to national security, did the Founding Fathers mean that the freedom of the press extends to active attempts to sabotage United States foreign policy or war against an enemy that has attacked us?
As Andy McCarthy points out, just three years ago, the New York Times was crying and criticizing the military effort and suggesting, you know, interrupt their money flows.
This is what we need to do.
It's the money flows that could shut them down if we could find it.
Now we're doing that and somebody, and this, you know, there's another thing, the shadow government somewhere.
I don't know if they're Clinton holdovers or who they are, just career libs that are at state, CIA, Pentagon, who are clearly leaking this stuff.
We don't have a right to know anything about that.
The terrorists have a right to know, according to the New York Times, everything we're doing to try to combat them.
But readers of the New York Times do not have the right to know who it is that's leaking this information that Peter King, congressman from Long Island and New York, has accurately called treason.
So this takes us now to Virginia Buckingham in the Boston Herald today.
Prosecute the New York Times, censure Murtha.
I have a better idea.
Sit back and watch him self-destruct.
Murtha and the New York Times have done more to aid the fight for Republicans to retain their House and Senate majorities in the last couple of days than Ken Melman, the Republican National Committee, could do all year.
But no one, not even the guys who are so devoted to the GOP that they wear elephants on their ties, should be cheering.
What's been lost by Murthy's rantings and the Times' irresponsibility can never be regained by electoral victory in the fall.
Nor will they regain what they've lost by their own words and actions, and that's the moral high ground.
Let's start with the New York Times.
We're less safe today from terrorist attack than we were before the Times disclosed the existence of the NSA's terrorist surveillance program.
We are more in danger today because the New York Times and other outlets disclose that American intelligence has access to foreign banking transactions.
Combined, these two programs gave American officials tools they didn't have before September 11th to track and disrupt terrorist plots before thousands die.
By the Times' own admission, the penetration into international banking networks helped track down the Bally bombers.
How many more innocent young lives were saved as a result from a similar fate in other discos in other terrorist strongholds or as possible in a nightclub in New York?
Before the Times revealed these two security programs, literally in black and white, Al-Qaeda and its allies didn't know, couldn't know for sure, how best to avoid detection, but they do now.
Peter King, no Bush administration Tody, said it best.
Nobody elected the New York Times to do anything.
The New York Times is putting its own arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people.
The time has come for the American people to realize and the New York Times to realize we're at war and they can't be just on their own deciding what to declassify and what to release.
But they did.
They did exactly that in violation of law.
Yet, prosecuting them will allow Bill Keller and his Democratic defenders to change the subject from their disregard for American safety to their stewardship of the First Amendment.
Bush administration ought to keep this escape hatch firmly closed.
She goes on to make the point, let them keep doing what they're doing since they've already blown it this way.
They're just going to self-destruct Murtha as well.
Any other Democrats and media institutions who join them will just be demonstrating to.
And by the way, let me interject today.
You know, everybody in politics, I do not happen to subscribe to this theory as much as others, but they still have this theory that the great unwashed, the great middle, the great independents, the moderates out there, the people that are not ideologues, people that don't run around with their minds made up all the time.
They're open-minded.
They're waiting for all data.
They're waiting for all information to make up their intelligent minds.
That's how they're portrayed.
I disagree with that characterization, but that's not the point.
Point is, if there are such people, even they are outraged by this.
Even they instinctively understand the danger that this poses and the anti-American activity that it represents.
And even they will remember it and understand it.
And if people on the left who care so much about reaching these people don't get a handle on what their press organs and members are doing when it comes to this ongoing effort to sabotage victory over this enemy, then they are going to pay the price.
They're going to lose the moral high ground, which they don't think they have it anymore anyway, but they claim they do.
They think they do.
They operate as though they think they do.
And credibility.
So, on one hand, I know it's frustrating.
God, come on, Rush, we've got to do something about it.
But if you take him to court, it'll just be like taking Masawi to trial.
You end up letting him change the subject and a whole bunch of stuff that's not even up for grabs is going to become the focus.
First Amendment, this is that, and the other thing, not the actions of the New York Times.
Let the left continue to show people clearly who they are and what they do.
Now, not for the sake of electing Republicans, but I'm not suggesting that, but as a means of destroying their own credibility down the road, which believe me is happening.
Back in just a sec here.
John Fund, Wall Street Journal, opinionjournal.com actually is their website yesterday piece calling titled Worst of All Worlds.
He's about Murthy.
He's a male Cindy Sheehan, a one-man wrecking crew on ethics.
Is Merthyr the man to lead the Democrats?
He wants the gig if they win back the House.
I think I'm going to tell you something, folks.
Jack Murtha and John Kerry, who served in Vietnam.
Did you know that, Brian?
John Kerry served in Vietnam.
Those two guys personify, ladies and gentlemen, what happens to the mentality of a Democrat who serves in the military.
I mean, just something gets in there and their brain starts rotting away.
Like a poison, it gets in there.
The military had poisoned these guys.
Anyway, the last item in John Fund's piece today is this.
A poll taken last month by Democrat consultants James Carville and Stan Greenberg found that Democrats are underperforming and that the current measures of Democratic turnout and enthusiasm are not impressive.
They conclude that their party must show voters something more than they already have, or they, along with Republicans, could see a stay-at-home protest this fall.
By pushing forward Murtha as a fresh leader for their party, Democrats are reinforcing the worst stereotype many swing voters have of a congressional Democrat, a big spender tarnished by scandal who holds wacky foreign policy views.
And don't forget, we pointed out to you that he, you know, Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the AB scam scandal.
We even have the tape of him being offered a $50,000 bribery says, not interested at this point.
Anyway, I want to hear what President Bush had to say.
Was yesterday, delivered a statement to the press, then took some questions, unidentified female reporterte, said, Sir, several news organizations have reported about a program that allows administrations to look into bank records of certain suspected terrorists.
My question is: one, why have you not gotten Congress to ask for authorization for this program five years after it started?
And two, with respect, if neither the court nor the legislature is allowed to know about these programs, how can you feel confident that the check and balance system works?
Congress was briefed.
And what we did was fully authorized under the law.
And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful.
We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America.
And for people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America.
What we were doing was the right thing.
The 9-11 Commission recommended that the government be robust in tracing money.
If you want to figure out what the terrorists are doing, you try to follow their money.
And that's exactly what we're doing.
And the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror.
He sounds royally ticked off, does he not, ladies and gentlemen?
As well, he should be.
I mean, because this is the same bunch.
How come the 9-11 Commission recommendations haven't been enacted?
Why Bush doesn't care?
It was just a sham.
Well, something that they're doing that follows the 9-11 recommendations, and it's blown sky high.
The terrorist surveillance program's blown sky high.
How this is blown sky high.
And whatever else is come up with to do, if somebody leaks it, somebody, and what I, there's no conclusion, is a shadow government out there in this government that's trying to undermine this administration and in the process undermine the ability to achieve victory over this enemy.
They'll just leak it again.
Let's go back.
Let's listen to some more.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times.
We played this earlier.
We'll start with this again.
Blitzer, last night on CNN, interviewing by phone Bill Keller, asked him a question.
He said, the Treasury Secretary Jon Snow says not only Bush administration officials, but others appealed to you at the New York Times not to disclose this information, including some Democrats and members of the 9-11 Commission, including the chairman and the co-chairman, as well as members of Congress on the Intelligence Committee.
Is that true?
Three people outside of the administration were asked by the administration to call us.
All of them spoke.
They thought in confidence, and I don't think I'll breach the confidence of what they said, although I will say that not all of them urged us not to publish.
Who are the three people outside of the administration?
Tom Kaine, Lee Hamilton, and Congressman Jack Martha.
Jack Martha, I'm still trying to figure out who in the administration would call the New York Times or call Jack Martha and say, would you call Keller at the New York Times and tell him not to run this stuff?
I'm sorry, folks.
It just doesn't compute.
Not even with some of the crazy things this administration has reportedly done in reaching out to its enemies.
I don't know what to believe.
I'm not calling anybody a liar.
That stuns me.
Next question from Wolf.
Let me read to you also from the Snow letter, the Jon Snow letter to Bill Keller. Quote, the fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works.
Those are strong and biting words, Bill Keller.
Arrogant?
With all due respect, I think it would be arrogant for us to preempt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding on our own that these programs are perfectly legal and abuse-proof.
We spent weeks listening to the administration case.
I personally spent a long time in Secretary Snow's office and spoke on the phone to John Negroponte.
Others at the paper spoke to other officials.
I believe they genuinely did not want us to publish this.
But I think it's not responsible of us to just take them at their word.
You notice what he said here.
I mean, that's offensive, right there.
But that'll tell you that one of the guiding principles of drive-by media is that no government official ever tells the truth when it's a Republican administration.
What, Mr. Snintley?
What?
Right.
Right.
That's right.
He says, that's a good point.
He says, well, the administration was pretty half-hearted.
They didn't even, they didn't let me talk to Bush.
Bush didn't even talk to us at the New York Times about that.
It was pretty half-hearted yet.
He just says that they spent weeks, weeks talking with the administration, half-heartedly.
The administration was talking with them for weeks.
Arrogant, with all due respect, I think it would be arrogant for us to preempt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding on our own these programs are perfectly legal.
That is a slap.
This tells me exactly why they hate this administration, and they think Bush is out there destroying the Constitution.
They think Bush is out there doing all these things in secret and not telling anybody about it and abusing executive authority.
And they don't like executive authority being abused except when Democrats are doing it.
Then they love it.
They think it's fabulous.
They don't like it here.
Yet the president said Congress was briefed.
We have time for this next one.
Yes.
Wolf then says, well, when you say that their efforts to convince you were half-hearted, what do you mean?
One of the several arguments that they made struck me as half-hearted.
And that was the argument, it was really a secondary argument that they made against publishing, which was that the publication of this information would lead to a argument that they made to support their argument.
Wait a minute, stop.
Stop the tape.
What's half-hearted about that?
What in the world is half-hearted about that?
That publishing this would endanger the program was that bankers who are involved in it would be spooked by the publicity and would withdraw their cooperation.
We got a similar argument last year on the NSA eavesdropping case, that if we published it, telecommunications companies would be embarrassed by the disclosure that they were doing this and they would be browbeaten by their shareholders into withdrawing their cooperation.
To the best of my knowledge, that's never happened.
And so far, there's no sign that the banks are withdrawing their support.
Well, it's only been a couple of days.
To the best of your knowledge, that's never happened, withdrawing their cooperation.
I guess they think they know everything at the New York Times.
But you'll note the attitude, hey, we're the final arbiters.
We're the final arbiters of what's legal and what's not, what's right, what's wrong, and what this administration is guilty of and not guilty of.
We're the final arbiters on that.
And whatever they say to us, this is BS.
It's half-hearted.
No banks have quit.
This is not going to happen.
Maybe not yet.
Mr. Keller.
Not yet.
All right.
Bill Keller.
All upset.
With all due respect, he said, I think it would be arrogant for us to preempt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding on our own that these programs are perfectly legal and abuse-proof.
Thereby attacking the administration for his belief that they're just out there acting as lone warriors and renegades.
But the president said Congress was briefed.
When is the last time Congress briefed the president before they do something?
You know, this seems to me here to be a one-way street.
When was the last time the judiciary branch checked with the president before interfering with the president's commander-in-chief powers when they decide the status of prisoners at Club Gitmo?
Why is it that the executive alone among the three branches has to check with the others in advance of carrying out his constitutional duties?
Where is that in the Constitution?
Why does this have to happen?
Well, we know the reason.
He's a Republican, and they hate his guts.
That's why.
Also this, if Bill Keller were living during the Civil War, you know what would have happened to him?
This I've fantasized about Bush imitating Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln, almost everybody's favorite president all the time, would have had Bill Keller forcibly removed from the New York Times building and thrown in prison.
He did that.
He had politicians removed from their homes and sent down to Jefferson Davis in the South, who also didn't want this particular politician.
And you know what?
Lincoln would have done this without consulting Congress or the judiciary.
And you might say, well, but Russ, that was so long ago, and that was a real war.
That was a civil war.
Yeah, but everybody loves Lincoln today.
Great president.
Preserved the Union.
That's what Lincoln did.
That's his legacy.
He preserved the Union.
Can you say the New York Times is interested in that?
At the end of the day, can you?
You can't.
Now, I ask you, well, we got to see.
We got a couple, well, one more Bill Keller comment.
I just ask you as we listen to it, who is arrogant and who's abusing power here?
Who is conducting himself outside of American traditions?
It's our old buddy Bill Keller at the New York Times.
Here's a question from Wolf Blitzer last night.
The Wolfster says the administration insists that some terrorists, in particular, including Humbali, one of the top terrorists in Southeast Asia, was picked up largely as a result of this secret wire transfer program, the SWIFT program.
And that by disclosing the program, other terrorists may be able to go forth and be free and do their work, whatever they want to do.
Was that true that Humbali was picked up as a result of this SWIFT program?
Note who he's asking.
So the administration says this, this, and go out and ask the New York Times editor, is the administration telling us the truth?
We cited a number of sources saying that that is true in our original story and cited some other examples of where they believe this program has been useful.
We're not passing judgment on the usefulness of this program.
That's not our job to do.
There are, as with the NSA case, people who are expert and involved in the program who have questions both about its legality and about the way, in their view, what was supposed to be a stopgap measure has become something permanent.
But our original story did not quarrel with their assertion that this has been a useful program.
Well, that's even worse.
That's even worse.
Yeah, we're not passing judgment on the usefulness of this program, Boulder Dash.
Of course you are.
You're trying to undermine it.
If you're going to run out there and say that it's illegal, and this little notion, and we're concerned that it might not just be stopgap, that once it's in place, it might last forever.
Well, you mean like a toll on the Golden Gate Bridge or Al Gore's phone tax to pay for phone service in rural America or all kinds of examples I could give you where programs get put into place to stopgaps and lo and behold, they end up as permanent.
Wasn't the war on poverty supposed to end at some point?
I mean, theoretically, it was supposed to end the way they sold it.
All these programs have a start and stop here, but they seem never to stop.
Yet we're going to hold this one to a different set of standards.
Here's Peter King.
This is Sunday.
I want you to hear this.
Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, who asked him, from what you know, do you have any problems with the SWIFT program, this tracking of financial records?
The real question here is the conduct of the New York Times.
By disclosing this, in time of war, they have compromised America's anti-terrorist policies.
This is a very effective policy.
They have compromised it.
This is the second time the New York Times has done this.
No one elected the New York Times to do anything.
And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people.
I'm calling on the Attorney General to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times.
Its reporters, the editors that worked on this, and the publisher.
We're in time of war, Chris, and what they've done here is absolutely disgraceful.
I believe they violated the Espionage Act, the Comant Act.
This is absolutely disgraceful.
Yeah, he's fired up about it.
And, you know, we've had our quarrels with Pete King over the months, past months, particularly about the Dubai Ports deal.
Still love saying those words.
The Dubai Ports deal.
He accused me of being a flack for the White House.
But nevertheless, he's right on the money about this.
He is exactly right.
Let's go back to the phone.
So, Albany, this is Steve.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
I appreciate your patience.
Of course, I would have waited until my phone lines corroded to talk to you.
I think you're great.
I think that China is a country that tells the press what they can print and what they can't print.
And I think that China is a country that monitors their citizens' emails.
It's un-American, and you only have to go back 30 years to the Nixon administration to look at where this goes.
He was spying on his political enemies using all the same tools, infiltrating anti-war organizations, which they have done at my university, the SUNY Albany University.
They have intercepted our emails and they have sent moles in to intercept our groups.
It is not American.
And you know what?
They've already expanded this war on terror to the drug war.
They said drugs finance terror.
What are you going to do when they expand it to, say, sex tourism in the Dominican Republic?
Well, I think they're actually doing a pretty good job here on the drug war.
They're getting all kinds of people coming through customs here with Viagra.
But let me tell you something, Steve.
It's a nice try.
But what you're sadly doing is making a series of mistakes that conform exactly to what I think is on the minds of the left today.
You look at this administration, as Nixon of Watergate, you look at this war as Vietnam, you compare this administration to the Chikoms.
Now, that's offensive.
I mean, I'm worn out.
I'm literally worn out with this kind of thinking.
You have to be smarter than this.
The Chinese spy on their people.
We're not spying on Americans in the NSA program.
We're not tracking the financial transactions of Americans unless there is a terrorist connection.
And it is working.
The New York Times was not commanded not to publish.
The administration asked them not to publish.
They spent weeks trying to explain to them the program.
And Bill Keller just admitted: hey, we're not judging the success of the program.
A lot of people have told us it's a successful program.
We're just concerned about whether or not it's legal and blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's the arrogance.
This is a time of war.
To equate this with Nixon spying on the guys in the Democratic National Committee at Watergate is ridiculous.
And I have to think, I just have to think you know better.
I mean, we all have partisan leanings, and yours are obvious, so much so that you're willing to overlook some facts, I mean, some realities here that make this dangerous.
And I'm going to tell you, you know, when I was had this great weekend down in the Dominican Republic, and we had a lot of conversations, and I will tell you that one of the guys is a reforming liberal, but he's a liberal.
And he's moving to the center, not quite to the right yet.
But he was talking about some things, and I asked him a question.
You know, I like to spawn discussion.
And I said, what do you think the political reaction would be?
Who is hurt and who is harmed politically?
It's a favorite media question.
I knew this guy would like the question the way I framed it.
If we get hit again, if al-Qaeda hits us big again during the next two and a half years when George W. Bush is still in office, tell me who do you think gets hurt the most by it politically?
Because it is a, it will be a factor and the drive-by media will make that the whole point.
Tell me, would it be George W. Bush or the Democrats?
And this reforming liberal said, no question be the Democrats.
I said, why?
Why would the Democrats be the one most affected negatively politically?
He said, because I don't remember, I can't remember one Democrat who's actually acting like we're at war, that this is a serious thing.
Most of what I hear the Democrats saying is that it's not as bad as Bush is saying, that we don't need to be doing all of this, that it's not that serious.
We don't need these programs to find these terrorists.
We don't need all of this.
I said, okay, good.
Who do you hear talking about the seriousness of what we face?
Who do you think constantly refer to this war on terror?
And who do you think is the one guy, and I was a leading question, obviously, who's the one guy that has never wavered and made it clear that his number one objective is to defend and protect the people of this country, the national security of this country, and the Constitution?
No question, it's Bush.
So you guys on the left are going to have to do some serious things.
The odds of us getting hit again, they got to be pretty good.
They have to be.
People are wondering, well, what will they do next?
Who knows what it'll do next?
Well, will they go, will they kill 100 people or will they try to kill another 3,000?
Will they use airplanes?
They're not going to use airplanes again.
It's one thing we can be pretty sure.
I'm not going to try that again.
They'll do something else.
Have you ever stopped to think, folks, and I don't want to jinx anything here.
Have you ever stopped to think what a single homicide or suicide bomber in a shopping mall could do to the psyche of this country?
Let's assume that the London bombing happens here.
Let's say that some nutcase wraps himself up in explosives and goes into the New York subway or gets on a New York bus or something, blows himself up with enough collateral damage, didn't kill 3,000 people, but ruins a subway line for a length of time and a period of time and kills 100 people or so, wounds a whole bunch.
What do you think the reaction in New York City, security-wise, is going to be?
You think it's going to be easy to get around New York after that?
Do you think that that'll just be a self-contained?
My point is, what kind of unrest and disruption to normalcy could something as comparatively small as that do?
Why haven't we seen suicide bombers in this country?
I do not know the answer, but all I'm telling you is it wouldn't take many of them to cause as much havoc and panic as the World Trade Center detonations or explosions that this destruction caused in the Pentagon.
And if it does happen, you guys on the left who are out there saying that this isn't a big deal and we don't need to be vigilant in trying to stop these kinds of attacks in the future are going to pay a huge political price with your credibility.
We'll be back in just a second.
Just a little side note here, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll get back to your phone calls in just a second.
This is from Al-Ap.
Dubai's state-run port operator, DP World, DP Ports World, Dubai Ports World, has been anything but hamstrung by the Congress scuttling of the ports deal to run six terminals here.
Company that would be DP World has stepped up acquisitions of global shipping terminals growing at a furious pace.
Also seems that they've gained some sympathy within the terminal and port industry for its handling of the dispute, which some viewed as prompted by anti-Arab bias.
Katie Aldrich, analyst with the London-based Drury Shipping Consultants, said the industry feels that DP World has been treated badly and has a great deal of sympathy for them.
DP World acted with dignity throughout.
And they just, I just, we had a story last week that the Dubai Outfit bought some ports in Peru which have direct shipping channels to our ports.
So the ports deal has resulted in the worldwide eruption of sympathy for DP World, much industry cooperation with them around the world because they were shut out of six terminals here in the United States by the U.S. Congress.
Dick in Gardnerville, Nevada, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Yep, Nevada dittos to you.
And we're sorry about Harry.
We apologize.
First, I want to thank you for the miraculous conversion of my wife.
She has gone from a liberal to one who quotes you.
It is truly remarkable.
And before I take on the Times as an old-timer, can I take a shot at Mertha?
Yeah, by all means.
Thank you.
It's axiomatic in the Marine Corps that once you're a Marine, you're always one.
You've probably heard it.
There are exceptions.
Jack Merthyr is the exception, and his motto is once a moron, always a moron.
Thank you for letting me get that out.
I'm glad you did.
I love being, shall we say, backed up by intelligent members of the audience.
I'm really excited about the conversion of your wife.
At what age, if you don't mind my asking, you don't have to answer, but at what age, her age, did she convert?
We're not allowed to say those things.
You've got to be kidding.
I think she's 39 was the last time she admitted.
But at any rate, I'm so grateful.
You can't believe it.
It's wonderful to chat with her and have her listen to you with me.
Is it safe to say that your marriage has new vistas now and it may have been not matrimonially saved, but certainly saved from a companionship standpoint?
Yeah, it is.
We have a lot more fun chatting since she has listened and been educated by you and says, you know, it's an extraordinary thing if folks would just listen to him.
I said it takes a little bit of time to catch on.
There are a lot of people afraid to listen to this program for that very reason.
Well, I think that you're responsible for the Republicans having the power that they've got.
There's no question.
No question.
Oh, good.
Anyway, with the Times, I think that while it might be great fun to watch them, the liberals scuttle themselves, I don't think that the government has any option.
It's so egregious that they should be brought in.
They should be forced to say who their sources are, if for nothing else, but to send a message on to the people that are doing the leaking.
If they fail to do it, how are you going to have equal application of the law for people that do other things not even as egregious?
I understand what you're saying.
That is a frustrating thing.
The New York Times sources are more sacrosanct.
The whole drive-by media.
All their sources are more sacrosanct and valued and protected than the security of the country.
Well, I'm a doctor, so I can tell you in our parlance, and I talk to my wife, I don't really call them that.
And I think you've nailed them.
I call them the midstream, the midstream media, because if you hear them chatting with each other, Dan, in this matter, what is your analysis?
And that's exactly what you get back.
Only it's pure, and if you list, it would be pissed.
So you have them driving around.
I have them going back to the midstream media mecca where they hang out and talk with each other and where they don't know a thing about the rest of us.
Well, that's how this stuff all starts.
I mean, they do sit around and chat amongst themselves.
That's where they all end up, will all end up using the same phrase on every network and every newspaper to describe, say, Cheney.
He brings Gravitas to the ticket.
There must have been 200 drive-by media people around the country that describe Cheney in that way.
And that's, you're right, exactly how it happens.
Well, I understand the need legally to perhaps prosecute.
I just don't know if it'll happen.
I don't know if there are moles in the Justice Department for it.
And I heard Gonzalez, he was on the show yesterday.
He was not really that keen to the idea.
So I wouldn't hold out much hope.
Back in just a second.
Hey, let's not forget the New York Times is not just the SWIFT program.
They also leaked some stuff from a General Casey report on troop movements in Iraq over the weekend.
That and much more.
Straight ahead, folks.
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