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Aug. 30, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:54
August 30, 2007, Thursday, Hour #2
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Man, what a treat to be filling in for the great one today.
Rush Lumbaugh wrapping up his vacation.
He'll be back on Monday.
I am Jason Lewis from the land of 10,000 lakes.
Actually, 10,000 loons, too.
That's the state bird.
Land of 10,000 loons.
But enough about our state legislature, as the old saying goes.
I want to talk about the Minnesota Bridge debacle when we get time here today.
Also, we've been talking about this Virginia Tech shooting.
I'm going to follow up on the last call there.
He couldn't be more wrong.
And, oh, yeah, the Hillary Clinton latest fundraising scandal.
I mean, this has much more import than anything Larry Craig said or did.
The hand signals under the stall, all of that.
The fundraising scandal, these are the same people, friends, that demand campaign finance reform domestically, but already take illegal money.
How much did they have to return in the 1996 election?
James Riotti and the Chinese connection and the Indonesian gardener who was suddenly very wealthy and a big contributor to Democrats, then fleeing to Jakarta.
It seems to me that we've got some legs here on this, if the mainstream media would care to take a look.
Speaking of Hillary, I don't know if you've heard this or not, but she apparently hadn't seen Chelsea for a while.
So she runs out to California, wherever Chelsea is, and sits her down and says, Look, you know, I'm in the limelight again.
Our family's in the limelight again.
I'm running for president, like it was when your dad was president.
And I haven't seen you for a while.
You're a grown woman.
You've been on your own.
I've got to ask it kind of an insensitive or a sensitive question, kind of a tough question.
And Chelsea says, sure, go ahead.
And she says, well, look, you're not married.
You've been on your own.
It's going to be in the media.
Chelsea, have you had sex yet?
Chelsea stops and thinks for a moment and says, not according to dad.
I thought that was kind of a good answer.
I don't know.
1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
I am Jason Lewis filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Now, the last caller talked about this Virginia Tech notion that it's insanity to allow students to be armed.
Nobody is talking about allowing every student to be armed.
What we're talking about is if an 18-year-old, God bless him, can go fight for his country and carry a weapon, then a student who's 20, 21, 22, who goes through the training to get a permit.
Now, remember, 40 states now have liberalized, and I'm using that in the generic sense of the term, the good liberal, like before Roosevelt destroyed the term, a lover, you know, a liberal was someone who loved liberty in the classical sense.
We have liberalized our shall issue laws so that no longer the local sheriff or the constable can deny you the right to protect yourself outside your home just because he doesn't like you.
And we've done that in 40 states.
And when we've done this, we have found, oh, surprise, surprise, crime has actually dropped.
I'm shocked when the bad guys think you're armed.
And this is a great example of what economists call a free rider system.
Because it doesn't matter whether you don't want to carry a gun or not.
If the bad guy doesn't think or the bad guy thinks that you might have a gun, even though you don't, you get the deterrent effect.
And the data is there.
The empirical evidence is there.
Now, what I'm saying is the university or Virginia Tech has most universities have enforced a gun-free zone policy.
They suspend students with concealed handgun permits.
I mean, most universities do that.
And it's very, very, very, very rigid.
By the way, Virginia Tech, also, not Virginia Tech, the state of Virginia, recently became the first state to pass legislation that bars public colleges and universities from punishing or expelling students just because they attempted suicide.
I'm not making that up.
So you've got this double whammy.
The day this state panel releases its CYA report on the Virginia Tech shootings, you need to know that it is a Virginia law that they can't expel people who might be a threat thanks to privacy rights.
We have totally distorted the common law privacy rights that were part of our Anglo-Saxon heritage.
We have totally distorted that with laws like the Americans with a Disabilities Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which are horribly defined, horribly worded laws, and make everybody afraid to do anything.
Thank goodness somebody wasn't thinking about that in New York.
I mean, the fact is that we've cleaned up New York.
It's a great city to be.
It's a great city to be in.
And part of that is: look, if somebody needs to be, quite frankly, civilly committed, oh, I know I'm sending shudders through the spines of all ACLU members.
We have a prerogative to do that when there's a harm present.
And so do universities.
And for this previous caller, not to mention that, but to focus on the silliness of having these students carry guns, I'm not advocating every student have a gun.
What I'm saying is if you're 21 and you've gone through the permit process and you're not crazy, you're not a felon, you haven't tried to commit suicide, we do that for our men and women in the service.
By the way, if you think, if you think I'm out on a limb here, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and my alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa, are right now deciding whether to end a 30-year ban and at least allow campus police to carry handguns.
Gee, I wonder why that is.
Come to think of it, I wonder why police carry guns.
Let's get rid of those nasty guns.
I'll tell you why police carry guns.
For the same reason the Second Amendment exists.
They have a right to defend themselves.
We wouldn't want it any other way.
And so do you.
It's just like laws that establish a citizen's arrest.
You can do that as a citizen of the United States.
You also have the inherent common law rights and the inherent Second Amendment rights that allow you self-defense.
In fact, that's what Thomas Jefferson said was the only right you really have is the right to self-defense.
All the other rights emanate from that.
All of the Bill of Rights are designed to protect you.
The Second Amendment, trial by jury, you name it.
All of our rights that we have inherited from our English common law, all of them revolve around the right to self-defense.
National defense revolves around it.
So I vehemently disagree with the previous caller.
And again, I'll reiterate: it is not a coincidence that the serial killings, whether it's McDonald's in California or Lou Biscafeteria in Texas or Virginia Tech, have occurred at gun freezing.
How many killings do you see at shooting ranges?
Oddly enough, you just don't see that many.
Imagine that.
1-800-282-2882.
Also, the GDP, surprise, surprise, increases by 4%.
They had to raise the GDP estimates out of Washington today.
It's amazing how these tax cuts, what one political operative I know calls the greatest story never told, have worked.
Let's see, Bush pledged to reduce the deficit by half before his term.
Oh, it's already been reduced by half.
The deficit has shrunk since the Bush tax cuts $217 billion.
It is now only 1.2% of GDP, far below its 40-year historical average.
It is nothing but a talking point.
Besides, friends, deficits really don't matter anyway.
What matters is the total amount government consumes.
I love these Keynesians.
Deficits crowd out capital.
Can't have that.
What do they think taxes do?
Supply-side economics, supply-side tax cuts work because they unleash incentive and they unleash capital.
And if you don't have capital, you can't be productive.
And when you're productive, that grows the economy.
If you don't think the cuts in capital gains taxes, dividend cuts aren't important, look at the stock market.
I mean, look at what it's done.
But more importantly, look at what capital does for you.
Is the truck driver, and I know the labor unions hate this.
Oh, it's labor that counts.
It's labor.
No, it's capital.
Actually, it's both, to be fair.
But the truck driver is a whole lot more productive with the truck.
And so if you don't have somebody, investors, to buy the truck and invest in the company, that's called capital, and get a return on their investment, capital gains, you don't get productivity growth.
Productivity growth like we've had since the Bush tax cuts of 03.
Oh, I don't know, you know, 4% GDP growth, 8 million new jobs, real compensation, including health care benefits, going up.
Capital gains receipts.
Here's an odd one for you.
Never saw this coming.
Actually, we did.
Capital gains receipts are now higher under the new lower rate than they were under the old higher rate.
Imagine how that works.
I don't know what tax cuts have ever done to liberal Democrats.
They seem to work just fine.
It works for the smoking ban, folks.
What do the anti-smoking, what I like to call the stop smoking crowd, you know, the SS?
What does the SS want?
They want to tax cigarettes.
Based on what?
That venerable old supply-side notion that if you raise taxes on something, you get less of it.
So it works for cigarettes.
We raise taxes and kids buy fewer cigarettes.
But it doesn't work for work savings and investment.
No, we can raise taxes with impunity there and people will behave just the same way.
We shouldn't even have to discuss this.
This is classical economics.
It was settled long ago with David Ricardo and Adam Smith and the whole gang.
But yet we keep having to explain it because there are liberals who really know it, but they don't care.
They don't mind a slow economy with a Republican president.
And they don't mind a slow economy as long as government budgets grow.
That's the bottom line.
The left in this country cares more about the government budget than it does the family budget.
End of story.
By the way, Rush will be back on Tuesday, not Monday.
My bad.
I'm Jason Lewis.
You're on EIB.
Don't go away.
More coming right up.
Back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Jason Lewis filling in for Rush.
He'll be back on Tuesday.
I'll be back tomorrow, by the way.
In the meantime, speaking of taxes, I want to get to the Minnesota Bridge collapse because that's where I hail from KTLK up there.
And the demagoguery of the new Democrat theme when it comes to things like bridges has got to be, forget about no child left behind.
This is no tragedy left behind.
That has got to be their theme.
This is like the Wellstone Memorial all over again, or Cindy Sheehan or Katrina.
There isn't a tragedy or misfortune these people won't exploit.
And the latest exploitation is Representative James Oberstar from Minnesota's Iron Range District, literally, folks, holding a press conference at the site of the tragedy over the Mississippi before the bodies are out demanding what?
Recovery efforts?
Demanding help for the victims?
Nope.
Demanding a federal hike in the gas tax.
Talk about insensitivity.
This is remarkable stuff.
These people live and breathe.
They see taxes under every bed.
So we've got a situation here where, and by the way, I was on the air seven hours up in the Twin Cities that night when the bridge went down.
And it was just a few hours after the collapse where you're starting to see, much like the Paul Wellstone Memorial that turned into a political rally, starting to see liberals come out of the woodwork saying, see, it proves that Minnesota needs higher taxes.
We need higher federal gas taxes.
What?
The bridge wouldn't have fallen and we had higher taxes?
The bridge was declared, quote unquote, structurally deficient in 1990.
The current governor of Minnesota, as moderate as he might be, wasn't the governor then.
The Bush administration wasn't.
Why didn't the Democrats do something all the way back then?
Or anybody else that was in office?
The point here is the demagoguery of Representative James Oberstar on these highway bills.
And let me just give you an example of this.
We don't have a problem with infrastructure money in the United States of America.
We're spending more money on infrastructure than you can shake a stick at.
Except here's the problem.
Their idea of infrastructure has nothing to do with roads and bridges.
It has to do with Bike trails, bike paths, mass transit, Duluth transit centers.
I can go down the list.
Commuter rail, right now, I mean, look, let me give you a perfect example.
The state of Minnesota's transportation budget in 2005 was $1.9 billion.
In 2006, it was $2.3 billion.
Where's the shortage of funds?
The same is true at the federal level.
We had a brand new six-year federal highway bill in 2005, the $286 billion Bridge to Nowhere bill with GIP this 6,400 earmarks worth $24 billion.
James Oberstar, this is the guy that's championing from Minnesota the federal gas tax hike of 5 cents a gallon.
By the way, a little parochial news, up in Minnesota, the Democrats there want a $0.07.5 cent increase.
So in Minnesota, they're looking at $0.12.5 cent increase in the gas tax.
James Oberstar holds these press conferences saying, oh, look, we've got to have a gas tax.
Oh, by the way, you want to wait, Jim, until the people have been recovered?
No, I don't have time for that.
And the cheerleaders in the media are going along with it.
Meanwhile, the $286 billion federal highway bill financed with your tax dollars diverted $24 billion to the highway, to the massive highway bill and the rest of these trails, I mean, the earmarks is what I'm getting at.
And the mass transit account got $52 billion.
So we got $76 billion out of the last six-year highway bill for non-road uses.
And they're saying we need to raise gas taxes.
By the way, why should somebody in Kansas or somebody in Nevada or somebody in South Carolina be paying a federal gas tax that goes into the mass transit account, $52 billion in the last highway bill, that then builds a mass transit system for 2% of the population, which is very inefficient, costs 3%, 4%, 5%, 10 times as much as highways?
There isn't a mass transit system outside of New York that carries as many people, has one freeway lane, but it costs 10 times more.
Go ahead, you know what I'm talking about in Portland.
You know what I'm talking about in Denver, in Charlotte, in the Twin Cities.
You know exactly what I'm talking about.
You're talking about $40 or $50 million per line, per mile on these mass transit lines.
You can build a highway, a freeway for around $15 to $20 million.
And the freeway carries more.
So why are we diverting gas taxes to earmarks?
Why are we diverting gas taxes to a mass transit bill?
I got a better idea for you, gang.
The interstate highway system is done.
It's essentially done.
Let's return the gas tax back to the states.
You get 18.4 cents a gallon.
Give it back to the states.
Quit the redistribution of income.
Because what's being done with these massive gas tax-funded federal highway bills, it's not a lack of infrastructure as the demagogues are suggesting.
And thankfully, George Bush stood up and said, you're crazy.
We don't need a gas tax.
We've got plenty of money.
We ought to spend it not on earmarks.
And frankly, I would add not on mass transit and these boondoggles, but we ought to spend it on roads and bridges.
Back in 05, when the Transportation Equity Act, as it was known then, came out, Minnesota, which got 46% more in the latest six-year highway bill than it did the previous one, so much for short change on infrastructure, Oberstar issues a press release announcing eighth district projects, that's the district he represents, in the new highway bill.
New highway bill is bringing money back to the Iron Range.
The Iron Range made up of a bunch of class warriors up there, the politics of envy crowd, if you don't know about it, the Duluth, the Duluth paper makes the Washington Post look moderate.
The point here is $121 million over six years for 57 high-priority projects coming from your gas taxes, coming from infrastructure funding.
You know what they went for in Oberstar's district, the guy who's championing the gas tax?
The Paul Bunyan Trail, $560,000 using abandoned railroad grade for bicycle and pedestrian use.
The Sioux Line Trail, construction of a trail north of Bolus to the Mississippi River, $400,000.
This is kid stuff.
I'm just warming up here, gang.
Completing the 50 miles of the Masabi Trail from Grand Rapids to Ely, $2.7 million for a recreational trail connecting communities across the Iron Range.
The Sioux Line Trail Bridge, that's for pedestrians and bicycles.
That was $878,000.
The Duluth Transit System.
You know, when I'm thinking of high-density living, and I'm thinking of a massive metropolitan area, I think of Duluth, Minnesota.
I don't know about you guys.
They got $1.6 million out of the highway bill, $1.6 million for a Duluth Area Transit Station.
Paul Bunyan Trail Bridge, construct a bridge over a road towards the Brainerd area to facilitate bike, pedestrian, and snowmobile use, $1.5 million.
It goes on and on.
Of the $12 million in this particular bill that Oberstar, the gas tax champion, was sending out to his constituents, look at my press release, look at the $12 million I brought.
Over $10 million was for non-road uses.
Don't tell me we've got a crisis in infrastructure spending when we are diverting $76 billion out of the last $286 billion highway bill for earmarks and bike paths and pedestrian crossings and mass transit systems that fail to alleviate congestion.
There isn't a single mass transit system, and I don't care about the ridership numbers, there isn't a single mass transit system that has alleviated congestion or reduced pollution.
Not one.
And yet we're taking road money.
And by the way, these things require huge operating subsidies once they're built.
That doesn't even include the massive capital construction costs.
You build a 12-mile light rail line, you're looking at a billion dollars.
A billion dollars.
That could fund 50-mile lane-widening projects on your interstate.
This is a matter of public policy going the wrong way.
The new urbanist, smart growth crowd, the urban growth boundary crowd, like the Portland, Oregon types, who are there saying, we're not going to let people flee to the suburbs.
We're going to declare war on the automobile.
We're going to declare war on the suburbs.
We're going to put up urban growth boundaries.
We're going to make people live in Soviet-style high-rise condos next to a light rail station.
And then you can escape.
That's the agenda of which mass transit is a byproduct.
And until we get a handle of that, I don't want to talk about silly, silly gas tax increases.
That is a recipe for economic disaster.
1-800-282-2882.
I am Jason Lewis.
Minnesota's Mr. Wright, filling in for America's Mr. Wright.
That would be Rush.
Saving AM Radio and FM Radio, FM News Talk, like the one I'm on up in the Twin Cities.
Good to be here.
Wonderful to be in New York, in New Jersey.
Here is John.
You'll kick things off this segment on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello, Jason.
How are you?
Great, John.
How are you?
Well, I could be better.
Longtime Rush listener, and I just want to start off by saying I am a car-carrying Republican, so take my views perhaps under the context which they're given.
Sure.
I lost my daughter at Virginia Tech.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
Thank you.
And basically, I think most of the families have resisted talking to the media until the report came out.
Now that that is out on the table, certainly I've had a few things I wanted to say.
And also, you got my ire up a little bit with your comment in the last half hour, and I wanted to address that.
Number one, just as Cho was responsible for what happened down there, the draconian gun laws in Virginia are equally culpable.
And Tim Kaine is probably patting himself on the back for closing the mental health loophole.
But quite honestly, until they take care of the issue with anybody and everybody seeming able to buy guns at weekend gun shows without background checks, really it was a waste of time, and it's just more just something they can use as police.
Let me interject one thing, and I'll give you all the time you want, John.
Our condolences, seriously, it's a tragedy what you've gone through, obviously.
And, you know, God bless you for being a stand-up guy and calling in.
The point here is: do you think the war on drugs works real well?
You think it's impossible to go out for some kid who's 20 and wants to find a joint on the street?
Let me tell you something.
A lot of people from my generation smoke dope, and it's not as easy as you think it is, okay?
So you think that's working?
I'm just saying, if you really want to start a black market, just go down the road of gun control.
By the way, it was already illegal for the perp to get the guns.
It is already against the law.
Absolutely.
The point here is, let me get to the second.
I guess maybe I can make my point better by the second thing.
Sure.
And I've worked with a lot of law enforcement officers, and many of them, if not most of them, tend to be more of the conservative ilk.
Right.
And if you talk to most cops, at least I know up here in New Jersey, they will tell you that, you know, arming citizens, we all have a right to bear arms and own guns.
But that doesn't mean that we have the right to just go out and in five minutes purchase a firearm.
A firearm is like buying a car.
You need to be capable of using it in a responsible manner.
And you take an 18-year-old, you put a gun in their hand, particularly in a place like Virginia.
Okay, number one, the brain development, they may be more mature than I was back many years ago, but the fact is that emotionally, they are still not fully grown up.
You put a bunch of people on a campus with handguns, and all you're doing is inviting trouble.
So clearly, we should not arm the military because you've got a lot of 18-year-olds there.
There is a difference because the military, when you're in the military, you are under very close supervision.
But there are young kids there that have access to guns all the time.
Let me ask you this.
Are you suggesting that only the military and the police should have guns?
I think we call that a police state, don't we?
Jason, I didn't say that.
No, what I said was that in the context of allowing people to carry guns on a campus, okay, I think that certainly I don't see necessarily the purpose.
The other thing is that.
Well, hold on, now, hold on.
I'm going to let you talk as long as you want, but I want to address some of the things I disagree with as you go, because you're letting a lot of things slip by, and they're just not valid.
You go back to rural America in the 1950s, as recently as the 1960s, there would be gun clubs at schools.
Kids would bring their shotguns and their rifles to schools and put them in their lockers.
Do you know why?
Why wasn't there carnage then?
Well, because I don't really think we had as many emotionally unstable people or kids back in the 50s.
Then the problem is not the guns.
The problem might be the instability of today's youth.
Yeah, no doubt about it.
But I'm just telling you that the fact is that unless you, and the other thing you can say is that they were also trained in a responsible manner with firearms.
You take somebody who is 18 years of age and they find out that they can have a gun and walk around campus with it.
Number one, most of them, I doubt seriously, are going to be trained in places.
Are you familiar with the permit carrying laws, John?
Do you realize how hard it is to get a concealed carry permit in America?
Well, certainly up in New Jersey, I know how hard it is.
The training is very rigorous.
A felon can't get a gun.
I want to beg to differ with you because my business partner just got a gun down in the state of Florida.
And I think he went to a class for several hours, and he has a concealed weapon.
I bet he went longer.
I will tell you he went longer than that.
And here's the empirical data that makes me skeptical of your assertion with all due respect.
And it's this.
We have, as I said earlier, we have gone on a remarkable experiment in this country.
We have liberalized concealed carry laws, made them easier in 40 states.
And all during the debate, the anti-gun crowd, and I'm not suggesting you're one of those, but the anti-gun crowd said, we're going back to the Wild West.
Fact of the matter is, the Wild West was pretty tame, and there was a reason for that.
But we're going back to the Wild West.
We're going to have shootouts on the street, and crime dropped.
There simply is no empirical evidence that suggests that because we have people who go through the training and get a concealed carry permit, that that is going to increase crime.
It actually decreases crime.
And let me just ask you a hypothetical.
In the tragedy of which your family has suffered, would it not have been better for someone, and if you want to leave students out of it, fine, but someone on that campus who might have had an opportunity to stop the carnage before the 32nd student was killed?
I think, honestly, if a person who is not trained as a law enforcement officer has a gun, and in the heat of that situation, I believe that there's a much more likely chance that they're going to freeze or they're going to run away, even with the gun in their hands.
I hate to make a cliche out of this because it's more important to you and the country, but better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it.
And I'll tell you, chances are better.
And there's a reason police carry guns.
There's a reason for personal safety.
That's the reason why they go through many, many hours of training every year.
Okay?
And the fact is that the civilian population, like I said, I'm not against gun ownership.
And I think it's...
Do you remember the mall shooting in Utah a couple of months ago?
Uh...
No, I don't.
There was a mall shooting out in Salt Lake City, and a number of people were killed.
It was tragic.
But finally, the perp was stopped.
You know how he was stopped?
By somebody with a gun.
Yeah, obviously.
I'm just saying that I understand where you're coming from.
I would feel the same angst as you if I were in your shoes, I'm certain.
But if the colleges and universities don't rethink their open admissions policy to anybody who has tried to commit suicide, if we can't expunge this political correctness for quote-unquote the mentally ill, we have this big umbrella now, John says, oh, they're mentally ill.
We've got another victim in society.
We've got to worship them.
No, they can do a lot of carnage.
There's no doubt about that.
Number one, my opinion, and I'm sure it's the opinion of a lot of the families, Joe had no business even being at Virginia Tech.
Right, I agree.
You know, the fact that he might have had the mental capacity to do it, you know, had nothing to do with the fact that, you know, emotionally and socially, you know, he was just not up to the standards that supposedly Virginia Tech is trying to promote.
John, I got to run, but obviously I expect your position.
I disagree with you a little bit, but God bless you and hang in there, buddy.
I appreciate the opportunity.
You bet.
My pleasure.
I'm Jason Lewis filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
You're on EIB.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Jason Lewis in today and tomorrow for Rush.
He'll be back on Tuesday.
Best of Rush, by the way, on Monday.
You don't want to miss that either in Hickory, North Carolina, my old stomping grounds.
Martha, you're on EIB with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hey, Jason.
It is so good to hear your voice again.
I don't think of you as being from Minnesota.
I think of you as being from Hickory or from Charlotte.
I'm sorry.
Well, thank you very much.
That's nice.
I do.
I miss hearing your voice.
Your replacement's okay.
My wife has never told me that, oddly enough.
Well, I hate to change the subject because I've enjoyed listening to the radio on my phone and hearing your thoughts on things.
I just had a, I tried to get through WBT all day yesterday and couldn't get through on the Senator Craig business.
I just had a couple of questions and I wondered what your thoughts were on it.
Number one, I can't believe that somebody in his situation would literally throw his life away.
And he had to know he was going to be known by somebody, and yet he would throw his whole life away for a few minutes of euphoria in a bathroom.
Reminds me of college.
But, you know.
It wasn't in a bathroom.
That's just wrong.
You're right.
But maybe things might be classified as an addiction.
I mean, no one really knows.
Absolutely.
I heard a policeman yesterday who had been on that kind of detail before on WPT, and he was talking about the fact that this is a, I don't want to say a sickness necessarily, but there is a certain amount of adrenaline for these folks.
Forbidden fruit.
The forbidden fruit.
Pardon the pun, yes.
And I think desperate people make desperate decisions, and maybe it had been a long time since he'd done a new toe-tapping in the bathroom.
Which is something we all enjoy every now and then.
Let's admit it.
Absolutely.
I know I get happy feet when I've got to go to the bathroom.
I don't know about you.
No, you're right.
I think the strategy, quite honestly, you know, he got caught by this undercover cop, if the allegations are true, but he did plead guilty to disorderly conduct, is what are you going to do?
Either, if it goes to trial and he says, no, this is an outrage.
I'm being set up, I'm going to take it to trial, it clearly becomes public, or he pleads to a different sort of charge, or the charge of lewd and lascivious behavior, if you will, was under the umbrella of disorderly conduct.
If you plead to that, it might stay under the radar screen as it did for three months.
I think that was his strategy with regard to pleading.
But there is a trail that's been haunting Senator Craig, if you believe the Idaho statesman and others, for quite some time.
And it is odd that these, look, in my view, all of this, whether it's Republican scandals or Democrat scandals, but especially Democrat scandals, they are a reason for term limits.
The term limit movement was up and running in the early 1990s, and sadly it has been mitigated.
It's dissipated over the years.
And I tell you, you know, the people trusted George Washington when he resigned his commission to the Continental Congress in 1783 because they trusted a guy who would be willing to give up power.
That's how he became, here's a guy you can trust with power because he's willing to give it up.
We have career politicians that won't give up power unless they're removed from those buildings horizontally.
But speaking of power, though, Jason, I would not put it past a district attorney to see what he's got in his hand.
Here's a person who's a senator.
Maybe he disagrees with him politically.
He's out to score points.
I mean, we've seen that before here in North Carolina.
I wouldn't put it past a district attorney to tell this guy, hey, if you'll plead to just this lesser charge, we'll make it all go away for you.
I can understand somebody being so desperate not to have his life just blown away.
You know, things aren't going to go away just to make it go away because the district attorney said, if you'll do this, I'll make it all go away.
There are two points here, and you're getting to both of them.
One is there's no doubt that, I mean, Mike Nyphong was proof of that, that there is corruption in government, and there is corruption.
Traditionally, you think of district attorneys, why they must be crime fighting.
We've got so many politically correct district attorneys out there, it'll boggle your mind.
They're more interested in enforcing environmental law, enforcing all the sorts of PC crimes that raise revenue for the government, going after politically correct victims than they are in the old-fashioned DA that was going to keep us free from harm.
So I don't doubt what you're saying.
And Mike Nyfong was proof of that.
But I also think that Craig, in the words of Richard Nixon, gave him the sword and they twisted it with relish.
I mean, the fact is, he's getting his comeuppance now for some behavior that is at least unseemly.
So just because the liberal left has a double standard, just because they're out to get us, and they are, and they're allies in the mainstream media, they are, doesn't mean we don't have to rise above it all.
Well, I agree.
The thing is, though, it is not, as you said, it being unseemly.
It is not to me, it's not a gay or straight issue.
It is an unseemly issue.
I have several family members who are gay, and they would never, never think of doing this.
It's not a gay issue or a straight issue.
It is somebody who was doing something slimy in the bathroom.
That's an excellent point.
I was going back and forth with Snerdley during the break here.
And I'll tell you, think if this would have been a heterosexual act.
Somebody goes into a bath.
Well, I guess it wouldn't be in the bathroom, would it?
Although these days it could be.
Nevertheless, a unisex bathroom, right?
Or, never mind.
So they're soliciting for straight sex someplace, and they happen to be a senator.
You don't do it in public places where it's against the law.
And if you do it in public places, then there would be no debate.
His stature do something in a public place.
And number two, it bothered me immensely yesterday hearing everybody jump on the battle wagon.
He's guilty.
He's this.
He's disgusting.
He's this and that.
And nobody, I don't even know what the undercover cop said he did.
But he's presumed to be guilty.
Well, let me take a play out of the Rush Limbaugh playbook.
There's only one thing that Larry Craig is guilty of, and it's clear that he has restless leg syndrome.
That's absolutely a certainty.
Because why else would you be tab dancing in the can?
I mean, come on.
You know, I think there's great fodder for those of us on the right in the hypocrisy.
Barney Frank still in Congress.
Jerry Studs given a standing ovation after being censured.
All of that is true.
But part of the problem that the Republicans have right now is over the last few years, they're starting to behave like Democrats.
Hey, thanks for the call.
I do appreciate it.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh, back after this.
Another hour coming right up: 1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush back on Tuesday, best of rush on Monday, right now in Hoboken.
Here's Ben.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi, how are you?
I'm great, sir.
You were before talking about some of the effects of high taxes, and you mentioned cigarette taxes in particular, you know, as an incentive to cut down on smoking.
But there are some side effects to those high taxes.
In particular, when you're talking about cigarettes, it's bootlegging.
Right.
When the taxes get high enough, the financial incentive to get into the bootlegging business is just too large to ignore.
Well, you sound like the late, great Milton Friedman.
That's exactly right.
That's why taxes as a form of ban, that's really what you're talking about, never ever works.
Which begs the question of after all the enforcement costs, how much of the tax really winds up getting into the government coffers?
I mean, I don't know.
I was talking about the disincentive effect.
You're right.
You can't eradicate a market.
There's no such thing.
The government can't do it.
Positive law can't do it.
Markets just exist.
They are in the nature of things.
So you're going to have black markets.
Got them in upstate New York with some cigarettes coming across state lines already because of the high levels of taxation.
But what I was suggesting to you is liberals who say high taxes on work and capital have no effect, they assume production, people will work perpetually for the benefit of the collective and all that nonsense turn at 180 when it comes, while we all know that high taxes on cigarettes will reduce consumption.
They're newfound supply-siders.
So that was my larger point.
Speaking of cigarettes, wait till you hear the latest on what the SS folks want to do, the stop smoking crowd.
You're not going to believe it.
Talk about power being consolidated.
Don't miss it.
It's coming right up.
I'm Jason Lewis, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush, as I say, back on Tuesday.
Best up on Monday.
Don't go away.
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