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Aug. 27, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
August 27, 2007, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 podcast.
Welcome, uh welcome, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, thanks, Johnny Donovan.
It is uh summer Monday, and uh, you know, I sat there and I thought, well, Russia's gonna be off golfing, having a good time summer last week of uh August.
Everybody and their brother on well, not everybody's on vacation.
I see where uh we had uh 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 uh and doing the uh they're going back to school dance, uh, but usually summer Mondays are considered to be really slow days in the news cycle until this morning.
And of course, uh that all changed with the announcement that Alberto Gonzalez is going to be stepping down as attorney general, and there's um there's a lot to go over in this because this uh was I think just uh a henchman operation that's been going on.
In fact, I've got a lot to talk about today regarding Congress of if there is I mean if th there is they are st 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 and and to some extent no judicial branch, but it is this is an example of where Congress feels that they have the right to uh uh I they 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 Alberta Gonzalez and about uh what they said before and what they're saying now and what they want and what they're demanding and what the it's just it's an amazing uh time in which there are some members of Congress that are quite bluntly uh thinking that they are uh they're in charge of of the White House.
And there is a process called an 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 uh they forgot their their civics 101 lesson.
So we'll get into Alberto Gonzalez, but the but the overriding theme here is about Congress and about how Congress is uh 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 uh uh f and and and there doesn't seem to be uh I don't know, I think Gonzalez Alberto Gonzalez was uh almost too nice.
I heard uh Britt Hume this morning on Fox talking about this and and said uh he was fairly critical of Alberta Gonzalez.
Maybe it's something that's in, you know, when you're in the district and you're drinking the water, you all get the same message.
Uh 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 uh skill, his education, his knowledge, his his work as a lawyer, as a judge.
He he talked about the fact that, well, he uh wasn't a forceful spokesman for the administration.
And he wasn't um he wasn't real good at that part of it.
He wasn't good at speaking out on the issues that the Bush administration uh was was uh putting in policy, and he wasn't really all that good about even establishing policy.
So it was almost throw him throw him out.
Um I d I don't know, I 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 uh 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 uh more than their nose.
They have they have created the downfall of Alberta Gonzalez, and I'm I'm disappointed personally.
I think it's too bad that he didn't.
I thought he made it past all the the fire and brimstone.
I thought he made it for the remaining, what is it, sixteen or seventeen 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 um nice try, Congress, but you didn't win.
And uh Morton Kondraki 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 and I sit there and I think well if if that's the measure of 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 them everything on the under the book and he's been he's been there, so I don't know, maybe Gonzalez doesn't have the fortitude to 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 weren't trying to run the the Justice Department they've they forgot their 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 Maliki, the prime minister lashed out um 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 Maliki 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 a spade in this regard.
He's saying, look at you too and others like you.
I love this comment.
He talked about the fact that he said that they are, 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 Maliki is sitting there saying, hey, Congress.
you 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-Maliki.
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 bejeebies out of him and just make sure that he turns his back on us and starts becoming friends with those people in Syria and...
and Iran and and uh so way to go Hillary way to go Carl you've really done a great job.
We've got another whole and goes back to uh moron Congress on you saw the ratings last week where they're down to eighteen percent of people in this country.
Eighteen percent think that they're doing a good job.
We've got um Census Bureau tomorrow coming out with their poverty report about uh 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 uh 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 uh 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.
University in Houston where he was uh uh a member of the Lovett College earned a bachelor's degree in poly psy.
He went that the the faculty there was so impressed with him He went on to get his his uh uh jurisdoctor, 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 who uh makes uh Senator Schumer happy, but he's uh 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 uh junior chamber, JC's 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 uh pinheads under the dome.
And 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.
Uh uh Chuck Schumer, who has been one of his harshest critics, said this morning, he told CNN that uh this was clearly 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 uh and New York uh 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 um 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 um the Congress trying to get a no confidence vote in the Senate against Alberto Gonzalez that wasn't successful in doing so.
But he he calls him every name in the book about what uh what an inept man he is, and he's anything but it all boils down to the phony 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.
Russia's 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 Alberta Gonzalez wasn't independent from the White House.
Hello, look, take a look at the line.
It's the executive branch.
I hate to play Civics 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 uh information about the 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 seventeen 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 Limbaugh Radio Program.
Welcome back.
Russia's off golfing, so you got me.
Sorry, but we got a lot to go over.
Hi, I'm Tom Sullivan's on the end for Rush.
Uh, glad to be back behind the golden EIB microphone.
I'm just looking over some of the some of the comments Drudge has this, of course, has his top story today, and he's going down.
He's got the list.
Uh Harry Reid says, never the right man for this job.
Really, well, then why did the Senator proof him?
Uh 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 uh 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 uh thousands of courtrooms across this country.
But what is going the the seventeen sixteen or seventeen months that that the 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 uh Mike Allen writes for Politico was saying that um 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.
But 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 two hundred and ten-day clock starts again when a nominee is announced.
So it'll be interesting to see because um uh Alberta Gonzalez uh told the president on Friday that he was going to resign.
So we'll see how how much work has been done over the weekend, maybe this week, we don't know.
The president's gonna be going out of the country.
Uh we'll see what how long it takes for him to replace or to to make another uh nomination, and that would then start a 200-day clock.
So if he wants to drag his feet for a while, that's okay too.
And then you've got um oh, you've got Michael Chertoff is talked about as a possible success uh successor, Paul Clement, the uh solicitor general is another one talked about as a as uh maybe an acting a G. So it's going to take um it'll be interesting to see how fast the president responds to all of this.
Chuck in uh Fort Myers, Florida.
Hi, Chuck.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Tom Sullivan.
Hey, how are you doing, Mr. Sullivan?
Uh Gonzalez's problems, a lot of them are brought in by himself by the way he handled it.
Uh he must have sh 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, and that's the end of it because Congress certainly does not have the right to investigate firings of someone who are politically appointed.
Yeah, I mean it's a political job, and every one of these guys and gals knows that.
But I you know where that where he stumbled was that he wasn't real good before the uh Senate in his testimony.
And recalling You know, I I don't know about you, but do you recall uh emails that you got two years ago, three years ago, a year ago, a month ago.
Do you know do you know all the can you 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.
Well, yes.
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 I have 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 um uh savvy in the speech?
All he's got to say, all he's gotta tell Congress is you want me to testify subpoena me and then go into court to quash the subpoena, because they don't have the basis to investigate that type of conduct.
And then get up there and say, hey, we wanted them to leave and they left.
And that's all there is to it.
And stop talking.
It happens all the time.
The big difference between this, the big difference between this and and the ninety-three U.S. attorneys that uh Bill Clinton fired was he fired them on 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 uh a lot of people wanting to make political football.
But it it worked.
I mean, I uh if anything, congratulations to uh to uh Leakey Leahy and to uh 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's not 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 uh welcome back to the program.
Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
Yeah, the um well, it happens every time.
Rush always uh, you know, he's made this point, and it always seems to happen.
He, you know, he says uh every time I go on vacation, something big happens.
Well, this was a surprise.
I don't know if anybody that was expecting this.
I think most people were like me that they were looking at this and going, Alberto Gonzalez got through all the brow beating going on over at Congress, and they were not successful.
They were not able to do it.
Politico's reporting that uh 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 uh we don't have any confirmation on that.
Paul Clement uh watch well he does if he's if he's the acting, he doesn't have to go through.
This is that 200 day 210-day process that's renewable and renewable and renewable.
So he may be the acting A G all the way to the end of the Bush administration.
But he also uh has Harvard in his background.
Now, again, Alberto Gonzalez, a Harvard law degree.
Most people look at that and go, that's pretty that's a pretty smart guy.
But uh Clement was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
He clerked for um for Justice Antonin Scalia.
He served as chief counsel of the Senate subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism, and property rights, so uh we'll see.
We'll we'll see how that all works out.
This thing about Alberta Gonzalez, this is another one where the president stood beside him and said, He's my man.
They're longtime friends.
My my impression is of the president and of just people in Texas in general is that they're loyal.
And everybody gives uh uh 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 is this another Harriet Myers friend that's that's been ripped to shreds out of uh out of uh Congress.
Ed in uh Bingham, New York.
Hi, Ed, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Tom Sullivan.
Tom, how are you doing?
I'm doing fabulous.
I I'm uh I'm pretty uh frustrated and fed up with uh the fact that every time the Democrats levy charges against guys in our party that they get them the stick.
Uh I'm I'm thinking Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, uh Scooter Leby now Alberto Gonzalez.
And uh 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 we put the Republicans in office.
We wanted to see them uh have a mandate, which they did and follow it through, and it's just so frustrating.
We're we're tired of getting stepped on and having our guys get booted out of office or have to resign.
Yeah, I'm I'm with you.
I'm very disappointed.
I I don't know if Gondrakki's comments are are uh uh hitting the mark or not, but I would think that uh I don't I I'm uh 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 gonna 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 guy show a backbone, stick together, back each other up, and stay focused, and not uh, you know, turn tail and run the other direction and let another one of our guys get uh have to resign or get booted out of office.
It's it's incredible.
Yeah, and your point about your your point about William Jefferson.
Uh what is the where's the outrage?
There isn't any.
Yeah, exactly.
Where's the investigations?
Where's the outrage on our side of the aisle, uh pointing uh, as you say, wadding up uh something and throwing out the long stick, 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 a good one.
I'll tell you what I'll tell you what it is.
Alberto Gonzalez is too nice of a guy.
And and and it's one of those things where you look at and you go, that's the problem is that nice guys finished last scene.
I think it 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 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 eighteen percent approval rate.
I think this is bad news for Chuck Schumer, for Leakey Leahy, for the other crowd over there that is constantly, constantly dragging other people through the mud for for political reasons.
It's so clear is for political reasons.
Jason in Dallas, Texas.
Hello, Jason.
Afternoon, Tom, how are you doing?
I'm doing great.
I think uh Attorney General Gonzalez should have been gone a long time ago, uh, primarily because of his soft positions on illegal immigration.
Um his statement some time ago calling illegal immigrants otherwise law-abiding citizens, pretty much did it for me.
Um, you know, sometimes with the relation to the border issues and the uh U.S. district attorneys charging border patrol agents for doing their jobs.
You think he was working for Vicente Fox, you know, uh 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 I look it.
I 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 Amber Alberta Gonzalez, uh 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 that or is it the fact that they uh somebody tried to kiss it off one time that there was uh uh a lady of 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 Alberta Gonzalez whose grandparents uh were maybe from Mech from Mexico?
I I don't know.
Is it 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.
Um he's no Texan, and either am I. We both just chose to live here.
And um, you know, it's it basically it's a loyalty thing.
Are you gonna be loyal to your country and do your con constitutionally mandate a job?
Or are you gonna be a globalist or are you gonna try to serve other masters besides the Constitution?
And there's a lot of other stuff going on besides following the mandate for the Constitution, and that's what's got us in the situation we're in.
You know, and that's why it's gonna be Gonzalez goal and well, but here's the other deal is that again, uh 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 this the the proclamations and feelings of his of the president.
But if you look at if you look at President Bush's um manner and handling business, um he 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 a whole lot of hands-on governing.
You know, he'll set the agenda and then he'll appoint people to run with it.
Yep.
He's uh he's our first MBA president.
Um you make a good point, but I gotta tell you it's one of those where I still don't uh 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 was should have been done, legally could have been done.
I thought he survived the run, but apparently not so.
Chuck in uh 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.
Uh you're dead right, but it's this is just another element of the Democratic Party or the liberal media to go after Bush.
This has to do with Gonzalez.
They just devoured one more administration who's saying this whole administration is corrupt.
And they're gonna 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 gonna get qualified people to run in these offices if we allow the other party to just destroy everyone put in there?
And and that and that's the thing, whether you're a Democrat or Republican.
Right.
It uh 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 eighty-two percent.
Eighty-two percent of us, we eighty-two percent of us can't agree on anything.
But we agree that Congress is a lousy Congress.
And I agree with you, it is a very much of a direct attack against the Bush administration, and it's a constant barrage.
They're sending in shells against the against the White House on a regular basis, and this one stuck, and it's the weirdest part about this is that this was it stuck, and yet it was by far the most um I don't know, unsupported scandal legally that you could ever possibly imagine.
It doesn't follow the rules of the executive branch versus versus the legislative branch.
We will come back.
Alberto Gonzalez is out.
Uh 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.
Uh and then there's uh process of who would want to be going through the Senate confirmation hearings on this one.
When when Alberta 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 Alberta 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 yeah, that's all right.
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 uh phone number 1800-282-2882.
We'll be right back.
Tom Sullivan's sitting in for Rush.
Welcome back.
Tom Sullivan in for Rush.
Uh 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, uh, big news story, Alberta Gonzalez, attorney general has uh resigned, stepping down, and um I was just going back and looking at some of the some of the publicity of when he was first nominated to replace John Ashcroft.
And interesting, back in those days, which was back um well, he was sworn in in February of 05, 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 uh it was reported by some that he did that he did not oppose abortion or affirmative action.
And the New York Times was quoted at the time saying uh that Republicans were saying it was uh an appointment to the attorney general's office so that he could later go on to become a Supreme Court justice.
He was uh confirmed by fifty-four Republicans and six Democrats.
He was opposed by thirty-six Democrats in his confirmation hearing.
This is he was sworn in February fourteenth, 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 seventeen 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 it takes years to get in there and to make uh to make things effective as a as a leader as a CEO, and he's not going to have that chance.
John in uh 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 that he was cut or let go is because the base, conservative Republicans, and independents are extremely upset that Campios and Romney Ramion, the uh border agents are still in jail.
Uh Gonzalez was the main advisor to the president on any major issue, especially law enforcement.
Duncan Hutter, um, Tom Cancrada, Ron Paul, a bunch of Congressmen have written up a letter to the president asking him to release them and to pardon them like Scooty like he did Scooter Libby, and Gonzalez there's something soft about this whole presidency.
It's the open border, the NAFTA super highway, 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 in port the uh the inland port that's gonna 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 you're not the first.
And there's certainly there are a lot of conservatives that are that have said exactly what you're saying and have been very uh harsh on this president about immigration or the lack of uh 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 no, but I have a problem with the president stepping over Congress when we go to war.
He needs to get congressional approval to go to war with Iran or anybody in Congress on both parties that's rolled over to this president.
Too much power.
Congress has got to start doing their their constitutional duty.
Let me ask you something.
When was the last when was the last time a president went to the Congress to get his war powers?
And that's the problem.
That's exactly a problem.
If we're going into Iran, which New Gingrich is gonna uh mention this one, 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 gonna go to war, we need congressional hearings about going into Iran because we don't know.
We can't trust his presidency, he can trump up the problem, John is remember, remember there was uh 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 gotta be yeah you can't be uh why you got you gotta 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 uh 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 ha 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 been it's gone through the courts, it's been tested.
I I'm sorry it doesn't go the way you want.
But that's that's the the system is working.
The system is working very well.
I like the Patriot Act, and uh 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 uh 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 fourteen people that have been have left the administration been replaced.
This is the first time, though, that one was railroaded out of town by the Congress.
Speaking of the Congress uh and what why they're ranking so low, we've got a whole bunch on that.
Plus, some economies coming up.
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