Aug. 27, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
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| Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast. | |
| Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Russian Limbaugh program. | |
| Hi, thanks, Johnny Donovan. | |
| It is summer Monday, and I sat there and I thought, well, Rush is going to be off golfing, having a good time. | |
| Summer, last week of August. | |
| Everybody and their brother are on. | |
| Well, not everybody's on vacation. | |
| I see where we had schools in California start last week. | |
| I see Washington, D.C., schools are starting today. | |
| So for some of you, you are getting the crumb crunchers off and doing their going back to school dance. | |
| But usually summer Mondays are considered to be really slow days in the news cycle until this morning. | |
| And of course, that all changed with the announcement that Alberto Gonzalez is going to be stepping down as Attorney General. | |
| And there's a lot to go over in this because this was, I think, just a henchman operation that's been going on. | |
| In fact, I've got a lot to talk about today regarding Congress. | |
| If there is, I mean, it's amazing that Congress thinks that they are in charge of the entire United States government, that there is no executive branch anymore, and to some extent, no judicial branch. | |
| But it is this is an example of where Congress feels that they have the right to do have the advice and consent, and that's a good part of the whole separation of powers in this country. | |
| But, I mean, if you watch and listen to and reflect back on some of the things that have been said about Alberto Gonzalez and about what they said before and what they're saying now and what they want and what they're demanding, it's an amazing time in which there are some members of Congress that are, quite bluntly, thinking that they're in charge of the White House. | |
| And there is a process called an election. | |
| election where you get to be in charge of the White House. | |
| If the people put you in the White House, put you in charge of the executive branch but this is not what I think. | |
| They've lost their, they forgot their, their civics 101 lesson. | |
| So we'll get into into Alberto Gonzalez, but the but the overriding theme here is about Congress and about how Congress is really trying to usurp and emasculate all the members of the executive branch. | |
| And of course, it's hardball politics. | |
| That's what this is, that's all it is, and and there doesn't seem to be. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I think Gonzalez, Alberto Gonzalez was almost too nice. | |
| I heard Britt Hume this morning on FOX talking about this and said he was fairly critical of Alberto Gonzalez. | |
| Maybe it's something that's you know, when you're in the district and you're drinking the water. | |
| You all get the same message. | |
| But he was talking about the fact that he didn't talk about Gonzalez's abilities as an attorney general. | |
| He didn't talk about his skill, his education, his knowledge his, his work as a lawyer, as a judge. | |
| He talked about the fact that, well, he wasn't a forceful spokesman for the administration, and he wasn't real good at that part of it. | |
| He wasn't good at speaking out on the issues that the Bush administration was putting in policy, and he wasn't really all that good about even establishing policy. | |
| So it was almost throw him out. | |
| There's more to ⁇ I don't know. | |
| I want more than a popularity contest when it comes to the office of the Attorney General. | |
| But again, for all of you boys and girls, if you go back to your history books and take a look at your civics books, I should say, and take a look at the last time I checked that the Attorney General is, and the Justice Department is part of the executive branch of our government. | |
| So we've got Congress sticking more than their nose. | |
| They have created the downfall of Alberta Gonzalez. | |
| And I'm disappointed personally. | |
| I think it's too bad that he didn't. | |
| I thought he made it past all the fire and brimstone. | |
| I thought he made it for the remaining, what is it, 16 or 17 months of the Bush administration. | |
| I thought he got through all of that. | |
| And that all the bluster and everything else coming out of the congressional hearings was nice try, Congress, but you didn't win. | |
| And Morton Kondracki was talking this morning, too, about the fact that, well, he just, you know, a lot of pressure on a guy like this to get up every morning and find out that people are calling you names and telling them about how inept you are and everything else. | |
| It's so horrible about you. | |
| And I sit there and I think, well, if that's the measure of what you do in Washington, is that if name-calling will cause you to leave your job, then the president probably should have left about three weeks after he was elected. | |
| I mean, you talk about a guy that is getting hammered day in and day out. | |
| He knows, he knows people are calling him names, calling him everything under the book, and he's been there. | |
| So I don't know, maybe Gonzalez doesn't have the fortitude to stand up, doesn't have the thick enough skin to stand up, because if you're going to be in one of those positions, you do have to have thick skin to be able to bounce off all the attacks that are coming at you. | |
| So we've got Congress trying to run the Justice Department. | |
| They forgot their role here. | |
| We've also got Congress trying to run Iraq and not the war necessarily. | |
| Well, yeah, they're trying to run the war as well. | |
| But now they're trying to run the Iraqi government. | |
| And Al-Malachi, the prime minister, lashed out again in the second time in about a week and a half that he has jumped all over the detractors in the Congress that are saying, hey, we want Al-Malachi out of there. | |
| And he this time did it by name yesterday in a speech. | |
| He said Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin need to come to their census. | |
| So here he's calling a spade in this regard. | |
| He's saying, look at you too and others like you. | |
| I loved his comment. | |
| He talked about the fact that he said that they are where's something about the village that they want to run this like it's one of their villages, which is obviously a comment about Hillary's book about it takes a village. | |
| So even Al Malachi is sitting there saying, hey, Congress, you're not in charge of the world. | |
| You're not in charge of all of the U.S. government. | |
| You're one branch over there, and you're not a zero branch when it comes to what's going on in Iraq. | |
| Now, look, I'm the first guy in the world to go, I'm not so sure about good old Al-Malachi because I but if you're not sure as I am about the fact that where are his allegiances And he seems to be buddy buddies with Tehran. | |
| He seems to be buddy buddies with Damascus. | |
| Why don't we just irritate the bejebis out of him and just make sure that he turns his back on us and starts becoming friends with those people in Syria and Iran. | |
| And so way to go, Hillary, way to go, Carl, you've really done a great job. | |
| We've got another whole, and it goes back to more on Congress on you saw the ratings last week where they're down to 18 percent of people in this country, 18 percent, think that they're doing a good job. | |
| We've got Census Bureau tomorrow coming out with their poverty report about you watch John Edwards is going to be all over that because poverty is his thing. | |
| So we'll get into that as we go through the program today as well. | |
| But let's start the program with Alberto Gonzalez and let's go through this. | |
| Now, this remember when he was first coming up, well, first of all, let's go way back to Texas because he served as general counsel to Governor George Bush in Texas. | |
| He went on to become Secretary of State in Texas. | |
| He was on the Texas Supreme Court. | |
| He became the highest-ranking Hispanic in the federal government to date. | |
| This goes back to the name-calling and the attacking that we get on our president is the name-calling and attacking about how inept Alberto Gonzalez is, and yet you take a look at his background. | |
| He was an honor student in high school in Houston. | |
| He went to Rice University in Houston where he was a member of the Lovett College, earned a bachelor's degree in Poli-Sci. | |
| The faculty there was so impressed with him. | |
| He went on to get his Juris Doctor, his law degree from Harvard Law School. | |
| I'm sitting here thinking, this sounds like a pretty smart guy. | |
| This sounds like he may not be the guy who makes Senator Schumer happy, but he probably can run circles around him in the intellectual circles. | |
| When he was a young man, he was chosen one of the five outstanding young Texans by the Texans junior chamber, JCs, in 1994. | |
| He got a presidential citation from the State Bar of Texas for his dedication to addressing basic legal needs of the indigent. | |
| Ah, he's a good guy. | |
| He's a smart guy, and he's also a good guy, helping the poor. | |
| He was named Latino Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association in 1999. | |
| So you look at this and you go, man, this guy's credentials, again, run circles around some of those pinheads under the dome. | |
| And so what are we supposed to make out of all of this? | |
| All you're going to hear is about what a horrible guy he was. | |
| Chuck Schumer, who has been one of his harshest critics, said this morning, he told CNN that this was clear to the resignation was clearly the right thing to do and that nobody thought Alberto Gonzalez was up to running the job. | |
| Well, let me tell you, if you talk to, and I have talked to lawyers that work for the Department of Justice, that work in the U.S. Attorney's offices, they're career lawyers. | |
| They're not politicians. | |
| The job of the Justice Department is going on just fine with the bureaucrats. | |
| This job becomes a political job. | |
| And it becomes really a political hatchet job because if you go back and talk to, and Wall Street Journal did it this morning, went back and found out what Charles Schumer, the esteemed senator from New York, | |
| had to say about Alberto Gonzalez back when Gonzalez was tapped by the president to be A.G., he said at the time, it's encouraging that the president has chosen someone less polarizing than John Ashcroft. | |
| We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he's a better candidate than John Ashcroft. | |
| Well, what happened, Chuck? | |
| This year, Schumer led the Congress trying to get a no-confidence vote in the Senate against Alberto Gonzalez. | |
| It wasn't successful in doing so. | |
| But he calls him every name in the book about what an inept man he is, and he's anything but. | |
| It all boils down to the phony of phoniest scandals that have come out of Washington in a long time, and that's about the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys. | |
| Bottom line, we've been through this. | |
| Rush has been through it with you many, many times. | |
| U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. | |
| It is a Department of Justice which is part of the executive branch, and that is what's being forgotten. | |
| Democrats are screaming about the fact that Alberto Gonzalez wasn't independent from the White House. | |
| Hello, take a look at the line. | |
| It's the executive branch. | |
| I hate to play Cynics 101 with you so early in the week, but that's what it is. | |
| We'll take a break, and when we come back, I'll give you a little bit of the information about the guesses on who they're going to put in after Alberto Gonzalez and the whole process of trying to get somebody else to go through the Senate confirmation hearings with 17 months to go. | |
| Phone number to join the program, 800-282-2882. | |
| That's 800-282-2882. | |
| My name is Tom Sullivan. | |
| This is the Rush Lindbaugh Radio Program. | |
| Welcome back. | |
| Rush is off golfing, so you got me. | |
| Sorry, but we got a lot to go over. | |
| Hi, I'm Tom Sullivan, sitting in for Rush. | |
| Glad to be back behind the golden EIB microphone. | |
| I'm just looking over some of the comments Drudge has. | |
| This, of course, has his top story today, and he's going down. | |
| He's got the list. | |
| Harry Reid says, never the right man for this job. | |
| Really? | |
| Well, then why did the Senate approve him? | |
| Chuck Schumer, he's done the right thing, stepped down. | |
| Here's the one I like. | |
| Ted Kennedy, I strongly urge President Bush to nominate a new attorney general who will respect our laws, which translation means that it's the laws of the nation of Ted Kennedy as opposed to the U.S. laws, | |
| because obviously Alberto Gonzalez doesn't have the same view of the law as Ted Kennedy, which, by the way, is okay in our country, which is why we have courtrooms and lawyers that argue about the law every day in thousands of courtrooms across this country. | |
| But what is going the 16 or 17 months that the administration has, who is going to want to be in that process, go through that bucket of worms over under the dome? | |
| Now, Politico was writing, Mike Allen, who writes for Politico, was saying that White House said our focus is to have a nominee confirmed by the U.S. Senate who will serve until the end of our administration. | |
| The way it works is an individual may serve in an acting capacity, acting attorney general, for 210 days, seven months. | |
| However, if there is a pending nominee, the 210-day clock starts again when a nominee is announced. | |
| So it'll be interesting to see because Alberto Gonzalez told the president on Friday that he was going to resign. | |
| So we'll see how much work has been done over the weekend, maybe this week. | |
| We don't know. | |
| The president's going to be going out of the country. | |
| We'll see how long it takes for him to replace or to make another nomination, and that would then start at 200-day o'clock. | |
| So if he wants to drag his feet for a while, that's okay, too. | |
| And then you've got Michael Chertoff is talked about as a possible successor. | |
| Paul Clement, the Solicitor General, is another one talked about as maybe an acting AG. | |
| So it's going to take ⁇ it'll be interesting to see how fast the president responds to all of this. | |
| Chuck in Fort Myers, Florida. | |
| Hi, Chuck. | |
| You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Tom Sullivan. | |
| Hi, how are you doing, Mr. Sullivan? | |
| Gonzalez's problems, a lot of them are brought on by himself by the way he handled it. | |
| He must have said something stupid to one of the guys he fired, which he didn't have to do. | |
| All he's got to say is, hey, you're gone. | |
| The president wants it. | |
| I want it. | |
| Resign. | |
| We're putting someone else new in an agenda because Congress certainly does not have the right to investigate firings of someone who are politically appointed. | |
| Yeah, it's a political job, and every one of these guys and gals knows that. | |
| But you know where he stumbled was that he wasn't real good before the Senate in his testimony and recalling. | |
| You know, I don't know about you, but do you recall emails that you got two years ago, three years ago, a year ago, a month ago? | |
| Do you know all the can you cite perfectly all the ins and outs of all the emails that you've gotten over the last couple of years? | |
| I can't. | |
| I remember back to when I was a prosecutor that a lot of the emails about cases, it's hard to remember them six months after the fact once the case is done. | |
| So what was his ⁇ what was it? You said he brought his own problems on himself. Was it because of the fact he wasn't savvy in his speech? All he's got to say, all he's got to tell Congress is, you want me to testify, subpoena me, and then go into court to clash the subpoena because they don't have the basis to investigate that type of conduct. Period. And then get out there and say, hey, | |
| we wanted them to leave and they left. And that's all there is to it. Doc talking. It happens all the time. The big difference between this, the big difference between this and the 93 U.S. attorneys that Bill Clinton fired was he fired them when he came into office. This was done at the halfway point where they wanted to reshuffle the people that were part of the administration. So as a result, | |
| you wind up with a lot of people wanting to make political football. But it worked. I mean, if anything, congratulations to Leakey Leahy and to Chuck Schumer and some of the others. They did it. They made something out of nothing. It's a process in Washington that goes on. They take something, | |
| they wad it up, they throw it against the wall, and they see if it sticks. And they do it over and over and over again. And most of the things don't stick, but they get a little buzz. They get a little mainstream media picks up on it. But this one, | |
| for some reason, stuck. And It has never been reported accurately over and over again that this is something that is at the prerogative of the president. You serve at the pleasure of the president. What's so hard to understand about that? We'll be right back. And welcome back to the program. Thanks, | |
| Johnny Donovan. Yeah, well, it happens every time. Rush always, you know, he's made this point, and it always seems to happen. He says, every time I go on vacation, something big happens. Well, this was a surprise. I don't know if anybody was expecting this. I think most people were like me that they were looking at this and going, Alberto Gonzalez got through all the browbeating going on over at Congress, | |
| and they were not successful. They were not able to do it. Politico is reporting that Solicitor General Paul Clement will be the acting Attorney General, but they also reported that John Edwards was dropping from his campaign. So we'll just give them credit, but we don't know, we don't have any confirmation on that. Paul Clement watched, well, if he's the acting, | |
| he doesn't have to go through. This is that 210-day process that's renewable and renewable and renewable. So he may be the acting AG all the way to the end of the Bush administration. But he also has Harvard in his background. Now, again, | |
| Alberto Gonzalez, a Harvard law degree, most people look at that and go, that's a pretty smart guy. But Clement was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Justice Anthony Scalia. He served as chief counsel of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, | |
| Federalism, and Property Rights. So we'll see. We'll see how that all works out. This thing about Alberto Gonzalez, this is another one where the president stood beside him and said, he's my man. They're longtime friends. My impression is of the president and of just people in Texas in general is that they're loyal. And everybody gives the president a hard time for the loyalty. I thought loyalty was a good thing. But then again, | |
| there was another Texan loyalty longtime friend, Harriet Myers. Is this another Harriet Myers friend that's been ripped to shreds out of Congress? Ed in Bingham, | |
| New York. Hi, Ed. You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Tom Sullivan. Tom, how you doing? I'm doing fabulous. I'm pretty frustrated and fed up with the fact that every time the Democrats levy charges against guys in our party that they get them to stick, | |
| I'm thinking Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Scooter Libby, now Alberto Gonzalez. And on the opposite side of the fence, you have William Jefferson, who was caught with money, who is still serving in office. You know, we put the Republicans in office. We wanted to see them have a mandate, which they did, and follow it through. And it's just so frustrating. We're tired of getting stepped on and having our guys get booted out of office or have to resign. Yeah, | |
| I'm with you. I'm very disappointed. I don't know if Kondracki's comments are hitting the mark or not, but I would think that if you've ever met people that have been under intense publicity that's negative, | |
| it really does envelop their lives. But you've got to, if you're going to be at this high level of government, you've got to be able to handle that and not cave. And I think he caved, and I'm disappointed in him for caving. I wish he would have stuck it out and basically in your face to all the people over at the Justice or the Judicial Committee in Congress who thought that they ran the Justice Department. They think they run it. That's exactly what we want to see. We want to see our guys show a backbone, | |
| stick together, back each other up, and stay focused and not turntail and run the other direction and let another one of our guys have to resign or get booted out of office. It's incredible. Yeah, and your point about William Jefferson, | |
| where's the outrage? There isn't any. Exactly. Where's the investigations? Where's the outrage on our side of the aisle? pointing, as you say, wadding up something and throwing it along sick. And that guy's clearly dirty, and there he is. He's in his office. He's got his power, | |
| his title, and another one of our guys is asked to step down. And it has to be. I'll tell you what it is. Alberto Gonzalez is too nice of a guy. And it's one of those things where you look at it and you go, that's the problem. Is that nice guys finished last saying? I think it applies here. I think it actually does apply. The president said so much this morning. He said, | |
| I'm quoting the president. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzalez is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons. If you want to go to Washington, | |
| you better be willing to have your good name drugged through the mud over and over and over again because that's what they do to each other. And they wonder why they have an 18% approval rate. I think this is bad news for Chuck Schumer, | |
| for Leaky Leahy, for the other crowd over there that is constantly, constantly dragging other people through the mud for political reasons. It's so clear it's for political reasons. Jason in Dallas, Texas. Hello, | |
| Jason. Afternoon, Tom. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I think Attorney General Gonzalez should have been gone a long time ago, primarily because of his soft positions on illegal immigration. His statement some time ago calling illegal immigrants otherwise law-abiding citizens pretty much did it for me. You know, | |
| sometimes with the relation of the border issues and the U.S. district attorneys charging Border Patrol agents for doing their jobs, you think he was working for Vicente Fox, you know, whether he wanted to be the Attorney General of the United States or Attorney General of Mexico. Maybe he's trying to get both. No, I can't. I look at it. I can't disagree with you. You know that a lot of Republicans are not happy with the Bush administration, | |
| which is the president and also Alberta Gonzalez not being tough enough on that immigration issue, which the public seems to want. But I don't know. You're from Texas. Is it a Texas thing? Or is it the fact that somebody tried to kiss it off one time that there was a lady, | |
| a nanny, that worked in the Bush household when George was little. And so he's always, and she was from Mexico, and therefore he was soft on her. Or is it Alberta Gonzalez, whose grandparents were maybe from Mexico? I don't know. Is it an ethnic thing or a Texas thing? Yeah, | |
| I'm about as Texan as George Bush. I was born in New York City, and he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He's no Texan, and neither am I. We both just chose to live here. And, you know, basically it's a loyalty thing. Are you going to be loyal to your country and do your constitutionally mandate a job? Or are you going to be a globalist or are you going to try to serve other masters besides the Constitution? And there's a lot of other stuff going on besides following the mandates of the Constitution, | |
| and that's what's got us in the situation we're in. You know, that's why it's going to be Gonzalez's goal. Well, but here's the other deal, is that, again, some Democrats are screaming about the fact that the Attorney General is not independent enough from the White House. And I'm going, but wait a minute. If you're the Attorney General, don't you take your marching orders from your boss, the head of the executive department? So it really is. I think the beef that you have is a legitimate beef, | |
| but I think the beef is first and foremost with the fact that he's following the proclamations and feelings of the president. But if you look at President Bush's manner in handling business, he's not the typical president. He is one for delegating, and he frequently chooses people who are very qualified and very passionate about their positions. But he doesn't do a whole lot of hands-on governing. He'll set the agenda, | |
| and then he'll appoint people to run with it. Yep. He's our first NBA president. You make a good point, but I've got to tell you, it's one of those where I still don't, you may not be happy with him, but is that enough to boot him out? And that's the problem I'm having with this whole thing is the fact that they ran him down the plank and pushed him overboard. And that was something that certainly I don't think should have been done, | |
| legally could have been done. I thought he survived the run, but apparently not so. Chuck in Avon Lake, Ohio. Hello, Chuck. You're on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hey, good afternoon, | |
| Tom. And God bless you for pointing out the civics lessons that need to be learned here. But here's my concern: you're dead right, but this is just another element of the Democratic Party or the liberal media to go after Bush. This has little to do with Gonzalez. They just devoured one more administration. They're saying this whole administration is corrupt, | |
| and they're going to go after the president next. Yes. With an election coming, that's what this is all about. Yes. Gonzalez's qualifications, they're right up there. But how are you going to get qualified people to run in these offices if we allow the other party to just destroy everyone put in there? Masculine was not a bad man. And that's the thing, | |
| whether you're a Democrat or Republican. Right. I mean, the hardball politics game has not gone over well with the public. And that's why the public says they're doing a lousy job by 82%. 82% of us, | |
| 82% of us can't agree on anything, but we agree that Congress is a lousy Congress. And I agree with you. It is very much of a direct attack against the Bush administration and its constant barrage. They're sending in shells against the White House on a regular basis. And this one stuck. And the weirdest part about this is that this was, | |
| It stuck, and yet it was by far the most unsupported scandal legally that you could ever possibly imagine. | |
| It doesn't follow the rules of the executive branch versus the legislative branch. | |
| We will come back. | |
| Alberto Gonzalez is out. | |
| We're hearing that Paul Clement will be the acting attorney general. | |
| We'll see if we can get some confirmation from the White House on that. | |
| And then there's a process of who would want to be going through the Senate confirmation hearings on this one. | |
| When Alberto Gonzalez went through the confirmation hearings, there were nothing but accolades. | |
| It's about time you got rid of that, Ashcroft. | |
| Oh, good. | |
| Look at this. | |
| But Alberto Gonzalez, it was said before, I believe Rush said it. I've heard it before many times, that he wasn't Hispanic enough because everybody thought, wait a minute, Hispanic. Let's see. Let's see. Oh, we have to write. They vote Democratic, don't they? Except for in Florida. And all of a sudden, you get this star, this rising star who's Hispanic, but the problem is he happens to be a Republican. And that is part of what killed him today. It's phone number, | |
| 1-800-282-2882. We'll be right back. Tom Sullivan sitting in for Rush. Welcome back, Tom Sullivan in for Rush. He's out all week. He'll be back next Monday. In the meantime, | |
| he steps out of town, starts swinging the sticks. And sure enough, big news story, Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General, has resigned, stepping down. And I was just going back and looking at some of the publicity of when he was first nominated to replace John Ashcroft. And interesting, | |
| back in those days, which was back, well, he was sworn in in February of 2005, which is another matter to get to here in a minute, but he was regarded as a moderate compared to a more conservative John Ashcroft because Gonzalez, It was reported by some that he did not oppose abortion or affirmative action. | |
| And the NEW YORK Times was quoted at the time saying that Republicans were saying it was an appointment to the Attorney General's office so that he could later go on to become a Supreme Court justice. | |
| He was confirmed by 54 Republicans and six Democrats. | |
| He was opposed by 36 Democrats in his confirmation hearing. | |
| He was sworn in February 14th, Valentine's Day of 2005. | |
| So he's been Attorney General for two and a half years. | |
| That's it. | |
| Two and a half years. | |
| I don't know about you, but two and a half years, and now we've got less than that for the next Attorney General. Do you see the private sector, do you see successful companies having CEOs come and go, swinging doors? No, I mean, they come and go, but not every 17 months or every two and a half years or whatever it might be. It is not a good way to get somebody to be, | |
| you might as well have an empty chair because running the Justice Department takes more than it takes years to get in there and to make things effective as a leader, as a CEO. And he's not going to have that chance. John in Topeka, Kansas. Hi, John. You're on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hey, Tom Sullivan, John Cooney, good to talk to you. Likewise. Well, you know, if you have a bad CEO, you get rid of him. I'm a conservative. And I know I think the reason he was cut, and he was cut or let go is because the base, conservative Republicans, | |
| and independents are extremely upset that Campios and Raymeon, the border agents, are still in jail. Gonzalez was the main advisor to the president on any major issue, especially law enforcement. Duncan Harter, Tom Cancrater, Ron Paul, a bunch of congressmen have written a letter to the president asking him to release them and to pardon them like he did Scooter Libby. And Gonzalez, there is something soft about this whole presidency. It's the open border, the nasty superhighway, | |
| which nobody talks about. You guys don't talk about what's going on down in Texas. The free trade jobs going to Mexico and to China. The inland port is going to be in Kansas City. You guys won't talk about it because of this blind free trade that's killing our country. It's tied to illegal immigration. It's tied to the SPP Security Prosperity Partnership. And there's something wrong as a conservative that I have with this presidency. And I'm glad to see Alberto Gonzalez and Harriet Myers go, | |
| go, and don't let the door hit you on the way out. Well, you're not the first. And certainly there are a lot of conservatives that have said exactly what you're saying and have been very harsh on this president about immigration or the lack of really being tough on immigration. So your point is well noted. However, | |
| however, do you have a problem with Congress running him over the plank? Well, no, but I have a problem with the president stepping over Congress when we go to he needs to get congressional approval to go to war with Iran or anybody. And Congress on both parties has rolled over to this president too much power. Congress has got to start doing their constitutional duty. Let me ask you something. When was the last time a president went to the Congress to get his war powers? And that's the problem. That's exactly the problem. If we're going into Iran, | |
| which Newt Gingrich is going to mention this when he comes out later this month. | |
| And by the way, he's all for privatizing our highways and the NAFTA superhighway and selling our toll roads. | |
| If we're going to go to war, we need congressional hearings about going into Iran because we don't know. | |
| We can't trust this presidency. | |
| He can trump us. | |
| Well, the problem, John, is remember there was a Congress that did, in fact, confirm his powers and gave him his powers. | |
| Of course, it was right after 9-11. | |
| Everybody said, well, it was because of the fact that everybody was all emotional at the time. | |
| You know, you got to you can't be. | |
| Well, you got you got to do something. | |
| Well, what happened? | |
| It was called the Patriot Act. | |
| I like the Patriot Act. | |
| I think it's been tested, as you will find when the if you look at the history of this nation, when we have gone to war after a war is over. | |
| it's happened with Abraham Lincoln. It's happened over and over and over again with wars. They go back and the courts sort out what was done right, what was done wrong. The rules are changed, tweaked, amended, | |
| and that's what's already happened. The Congress did give him the authority, did give him the blessing, and the Patriot Act had to be renewed, and it's gone through the courts. It's been tested. I'm sorry it doesn't go the way you want. But that's the system is working. The system is working very well. I like the Patriot Act, | |
| and I agree with you. Immigration, too soft. But I don't like Congress running him over the rail because of it. We'll be back. 1-800-282-2882. Tom Sullivan in for Rush Limbaugh. To summarize this hour, I think it was the caller who said it best was this is more of an attack against anything Bush administration than anything else. I was looking over the list Wall Street Journal has today. There's been in seven years 14 people that have been left the administration, | |
| been replaced. This is the first time, though, that one was railroaded out of town by the Congress. Speaking of Congress and why they're ranking so low, we've got a whole bunch on that. Plus, |
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