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Aug. 30, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:08
August 30, 2007, Thursday, Hour #3
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Well, thank you once again, glad to be back.
Third hour now up and running on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis.
What a treat to be uh sitting atop the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan, filling in for the big guy, who right now should be on what, guys, the uh seventeenth T, I would say.
Seventeenth T?
Teened up once over the pond, only once, I'm certain the great one does not take a mulligan ever, ever, ever.
I'll be here tomorrow, by the way, and then Rush uh best of on Monday, back live on Tuesday after that well deserved vacation.
We've been talking about the Hillary Clinton scandals.
Gee, another uh Asian fundraising scandal for the Clintons, Norman Shu, a fugitive bundling a million dollars for the putative next or the first lady and first woman president if she has her way.
It we'll see where this leads.
I mean, this is if this were anybody else, trust me, this would be huge for days and days and days, especially given the pattern of fundraising abuses.
But um so far, well, actually today it's been kind of hot, but we'll see how it goes in the next couple of days.
I mean, this I don't know what what attracts people to the Clintons with regard to giving them money, but I have never they are like magnets when it comes to money.
What?
John Well, that's true.
John Wong and he ended up I mean, these all all these guys, all the connection to James Riotti and all of that, they all ended up giving hundreds of thousands of dollars, then leaving the country.
My favorite is still the Indonesian Gardener, though.
I you know, you know, you think can you think of the campaign meetings in the Clinton?
Well, let's see, who could we tap for a whole lot of money?
You know, I know this Indonesian gardener down there in Virginia.
That might be a good thought.
Very, very odd.
1-800-282-2882, uh, let's see what else.
Oh, the Virginia Tech report from the state came out today.
I think it's much ado about nothing.
It really is difficult to listen to family members who've suffered like that.
But uh, you know, let me just reiterate one more time.
I know of no reports, no reports of people who have gone through the training and have concealed carry permits, who then at a time of a serial shooting, who have done something untoward, who have accidentally shot somebody or killed somebody.
Now maybe they're out there, but I don't know of any.
The fact is that the history of the people who go through the the hoops to get a concealed carry permit is such that they are very well trained, and if we keep if we keep establishing gun-free zones, it doesn't take Einstein to figure out where the perps are gonna go to shoot people up.
They don't go to shooting ranges.
And if the universities around this and that's why, by the way, those universities in Iowa are reconsidering their 30-year ban on firearms on campus.
It's for a reason.
There's a reason policemen carry weapons.
Because they're better off with them than without them.
Why would that any be any different for the rest of us?
It boggles my mind, but you know, there are only uh eight amendments or nine amendments to the Constitution.
The second amendment, I guess, doesn't exist in the minds of others.
And one other item on that.
How bizarre is it that everybody says, well, Jason, now I agree you have the right to keep and bear arms in your home.
You know, by the why the by the way, the second amendment does not specify home.
Have the right to keep and bear arms in your home.
No, it doesn't say that.
So why would you not have the right to keep and bear arms when you're, oh, I don't know, taking the company payroll out on a late night and it's dark, and somebody might be watching you.
You don't have the right to defend yourself there.
Uh let me reiterate Jefferson.
All the all of the rights revolve around the right to self-preservation.
That is foremost.
That's why we have a constitution, that's why we have enumerated powers, that's why we have the Bill of Rights, that's why we have checks and balances.
That's why we have federalism.
What we're trying to do is self-preserve.
That's why we have national defense.
That's why we have a war on terror, by the way.
Washington Post today, terrorism policy split Democrats.
Anger mounts within party over inaction on Bush.
Boy are the Republicans missing an opportunity here.
The Washington Post might be exercised over this, but you asked the guy in the street.
Question.
Should uh the commander in chief and the United States government spy on bad guys?
Hmm, let me think about that.
Okay, I'm done.
Yes.
That's about it.
What is the debate here?
The debate is over this wiretapping program that has gone.
You know, if we focus on the domestic policies, and and obviously there are ups and downs in Iraq.
Uh, we know that, although lots of gains have been made in the latest surge, but there are ups and downs there.
But the real winner, strategically, if you want to be cynical about it, is the domestic war on terror.
And the idea that the executive branch cannot use electronic Monitoring of international communications in a congressionally approved time of war is silly.
Yes, but in 1978, we passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA law.
Do you realize when Attorney General Robert Kennedy was issuing wiretaps for fun and profit that there was no FISA?
No zip zero Nada.
That if it was a national security matter, the president went down to justice and said, you know, we got bad guys, they're underthrowing they're overthrowing the country or could, or we got spies at the embassy.
I want to wiretap on those guys.
You know what the difference is, friends?
There is a bright line here.
I actually happen to be a civil libertarian, which is quite different than a member of the ACLU.
I'm a real civil libertarian.
The bright line is if you're wiretapping people to charge them with a crime or for political profit, you got a problem.
That's wrong.
If you're wiretapping people for national security reasons, that's called the commander in chief Article III of the Constitution, his war powers.
The judicial branch of government cannot encroach upon Article III, the president's power.
The branches are co equal.
So the line is pretty bright, it seems to me, and remember this.
Remember Jamie Gorlick, former deputy attorney general, lately of 9 11 Commission fame?
When she was testifying in 1994 as part of the administration, she said, look, quote, the case law supports, and the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, close quote.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both signed executive orders authorizing similar surveillance measures without the imprimatur of Congress.
So why is this an issue now?
Fact is that the FISA court is the problem.
Jimmy Carter got that in in 1978, and now we've got to run over to FISA to get a warrant.
It could take too long to spy on the bad guys.
You know, I'm from Minnesota, and that's where Zakarius Missawi was busy learning how to steer an airplane into a building but not land it.
Kind of gives you a clip or a clue there, doesn't it?
The FBI got a famous tip as to how suspicious it seems that this guy with no employment had a bunch of money, was only interested in flying the plane and not landing it.
We had information from the French intelligence that there might be something untoward going on here, but we couldn't quite get at his computer files.
We couldn't quite get at it because, well, you know, really, we we didn't have probable cause.
We didn't, we had to get a warrant.
It's a little bit like Bill Clinton, you know, back in 1996.
I couldn't get bin Laden, what could I hold him on?
He committed no crime.
You know, he had the opportunity to get bin Laden from the Sudan.
And here, let me just summarize this.
Here's the difference.
The liberals and the Democrats look at the war on terror as a crime, or they'll look at terrorism as a crime.
We look at it as a war.
There's a difference between a war and a crime.
I mean, otherwise, how do you bomb places?
I mean, this cracks me up.
We can't detain these guys at Guantanamo.
Can't put them in military tribunals.
First president to ever use a military tribunal tribunal.
Oh, yeah, that would be George Washington.
Can't do that.
But don't worry, we can bomb the hell out of them on the battlefield.
But if you get them on the battlefield, you better read them their Miranda rights before you keep them as POD.
This is insanity.
You can kill him, but you can't detain them.
This is a war, not a normal prosecution.
And in wartime, we allow the president to conduct the war, and we do things differently than we do than we would with a normal prosecution.
And besides, here's a novel novel thought.
The Bill of Rights doesn't protect enemy combatants.
It doesn't protect foreign combatants.
The Bill of Rights is for Americans.
It's not for the U.S. military.
So we know what the president has done with regard to the war on terror with regard to Iraq.
We know that there was a geopolitical strategy that says, look, if we could turn Iraq into a pro-Western Arab democracy, we might have a friend in that region that would help us.
We know that the president wants to spy on bad guys.
We know that we want military tribunals, not public trials, so we don't have to release classified information for unlawful enemy combatants.
We know this is what the president has done.
We know that.
We know we want the FBI and the CIA to share intel.
That's what the Patriot Act was all about.
We know where we ought to know that we ought to engage in, yes, criminal profiling at the airport.
Not racial profiling, criminal profiling, of which race may or may not be a part.
We know these are all the things that Bush and those of us who think the war on terror is important and want to do.
We also know these are all of the things the Democrats oppose.
They wouldn't go into Iraq, and say for Barack Obama, and do you really believe it?
They won't go into Saudi Arabia or Pakistan either.
They won't endorse military tribunals, so either let them go, or you release, you know, all the classified information in a public trial.
They won't spy on terrorists.
They won't allow the FBI and the CIA to share intel.
That's the famous wall that Reno and Gorlic built.
They won't criminally profile.
So what will they do when it comes to fighting the war on terror?
Not much, I guess.
1 800 282 2882.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh.
Back after this on EIB.
We are back on the Rush Limbaugh program, 20 minutes now after the hour.
Hope your Thursday is shaping up to be a good one.
Jason Lewis in for Rush today and tomorrow, the great one back on Tuesday, the best of rush on Monday.
Don't miss it in Ohio, Cleveland, to be exact.
Here's Chris, you're on EIB.
Hi.
Hi, I'm calling in uh you were talking about the domestic spying program.
Yes, sir.
And you have the example of if you ask the news one thing, but if you ask the average person on the street, do they agree with spying on people that are our enemies to keep us safe?
They would agree with you.
My problem with your example is your sentence should have had a comma in the rest of the sentence, comma without warrants.
The part I don't get is why does getting a warrant that you can get three days after the fact in a non-time of war and eighteen days after the fact in a time of war a hindrance?
Eighteen days after well, you just answered your own question for crying out loud.
Let me tell you, number one, you may or may not get the warrant.
Herbert Romerstein, a former intelligence expert at the U.S. Information Agency in the 1980s, said in a number of cases back then, quote, not only wouldn't the FISA job judge give the warrant, but the Justice Department wouldn't even ask for the warrant because they didn't have the massive enough evidence to begin with.
It is not it is not an absolute certainty that you're ever going to get a warrant, so what happens is some of them don't even get requested.
And I'll go back to Massawi.
There was evidence of a membership in a suspect organization, but that was not enough to authorize a warrant in the minds of many to get his computer files while he was trained up in Minnesota that might have prevented 9-11.
You keep going back at well, they'll spy on us, they'll spy on us.
For two hundred years, Chris, we did not have the FISA law.
The foreign so you know what the the case law on that was for two hundred years, my friend?
That we could get a warrant for national security reasons at any time.
We've been spying in this country since the beginning of the country.
Now, if you do it for national security in a time of war, no one should have a problem with it.
If you do it and I want to get Chris for political gain, and it's exposed, then you prosecute somebody for violating your rights.
Where my problem comes in in your Senate, and I I agree with the vast majority of what you're saying, where my problem comes in, and it's a very philosophical problem that goes back to the base of all this is are we actually in a time of war?
We've been told we're in a war that's never gonna end or could potentially never end.
Is this really a war?
We don't have a sovereign state that we're at war with.
This is really an international organized crime problem.
I would, and my friend, I would have preferred the United States Congress formally declared war.
But they did authorize the president to quote, use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001, close quote.
Well, I just see it as a you know, you're going, it's like which takes more if we're gonna give up our freedoms, and this is something where you can argue for giving up our freedom with this after the FBI spying, isn't that really giving into the terrorists?
They attacked us because they didn't like our freedom.
A way to show our strength isn't to fight back like a scared child.
The way to show our strength is to say that we're so strong and so brave as the United States, we're not gonna let your little attempt change our lifestyle.
I mean, in school, one of the things you're thought about.
That's great.
That sounds that that sounds like a recitation from the ACLU, but if you look down the street here where I am and you see the the open, the open space where the World Trade Center is, that doesn't hold much water.
Safety is a civil right too.
There's a balance.
The right not to have your buildings or your airplanes turn into missiles is also a civil right.
And it doesn't do you much good if you can't self preserve the the nation or our other rights because we find ourselves adopting what it amounts to what one judge said years ago was a suicide pact.
If we keep turning it turning the Bill of Rights into a fundamental suicide pact, we're not going to have to worry about any rights.
Let me just repeat one more time for you, Chris.
Were you bothered when all of the previous attorney generals in American history before nineteen seventy-eight and the misguided FISA law were authorizing wiretaps?
No, I think it was wrong.
I think the FISA law is a great thing to fix it.
I think FISA law is a horrible law.
One of the things I'll point out that I would say in response to your last statement.
A great political leader in the United States and a great American once said the person who gives up their liberty in the interest of freedom deserves neither.
Are you talking about Benjamin?
I'd rather go to war with the people that are running this country to keep our freedoms than go to war with the people that are trying to fight us.
And spying espionage is not part of war.
It depends on what your war is in the situation we're in, who's our enemy?
The NSA was using it.
Let me tell you something.
The NSA was using off the shelf off the shelf technology, almost like a scanner to monitor anonymous international communications.
How do you get a warrant to monitor anonymous international communications?
The same way you're doing it now without giving a warrant.
You go to the judge and say we need to.
No, they had the Congress had to amend the law.
You've got to have a name usually.
I I'm actually shocked at this, to be honest with you, Chris, because you you've got a situation here where Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton upheld the right to to these surveillance measures.
And by the way, they they preached fidelity to FISA and then amassed eleven hundred FBI files.
Yeah, that FISA law worked really well, didn't it?
Didn't stop them from getting eleven hundred FBI files.
But the point here is it is the FISA law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that made it impossible for the FBI and the CIA to talk to one another.
Because when FISA was created under Jimmy Carter in the wake of the church committee hearings that eviscerated the CIA, and the Clinton Justice Department got it, they said, Oh, oh, oh, if you get a FISA warrant, you can't share anything you get with, say, the FBI.
Because then you would be getting a warrant that somehow would be seeping into a criminal prosecution.
So even if our intelligence gathered, oh, there might be some chatter here or an attack here.
There had to be this artificial wall put up.
We are rendering ourselves absolutely useless.
We are engaged in this turning the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact here.
That is not what the designation is for.
The Bill of Rights are not there to protect guys who are enemies who are not citizens and who would fly planes into the World Trade Center.
But I do appreciate the call.
John in Boston, Massachusetts, you're on EIB.
Hi.
Jason, how are you?
Good, sir.
How are you?
Good.
You asked the question, what will Democrats do?
Yes.
They will hold a perfectly good attorney general for hearings over what amounted to nothing, yet you can't hold terrorists in Gotanimo Bay and question them.
It's amazing, isn't it?
It's incredible.
No, nothing amazes me that they do.
You know, speaking of Gonzalez, I do you not find it eternally frustrating that William Jefferson Clinton, in his first month in office, I believe, in nineteen ninety-three, can walk down to Janet Reno's office and say, you know, I think we ought to fire all sitting ninety-three U.S. attorneys.
Just to get rid of two, by the way, one on Little Rock and one in Chicago.
We're going to fire all 93 of them because why?
It's presidential prerogative.
I can do it.
And frankly, he was right.
It is presidential prerogative.
And then six years into this administration, Bush says, Well, you know, maybe six or eight of these guys aren't doing what we want.
Maybe they're not quite up to snuff.
Let's talk about once their terms are up, let's get rid of them.
And that's a scandal that that is the final straw in Gonzalez.
Yeah, you're right.
There's a double standard there.
Here's the thing.
If I didn't remember that happening, I wouldn't know about it because you don't hear about that on the news at the same time as you do Gonzalez.
You sure don't.
Hey, thanks for checking in, John Josh at Kings Bay, Georgia.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Jason, it's great to talk to you.
Hey, you know what?
I've been hearing these people calling in about, oh, these are my rights and everything else.
There is one thing that distinguishes us as a nation and as a people that I see falling into greater and greater disrepute every day, and it makes me sick.
It used to be that your average American citizen was concerned about his duties and responsibilities And his rights were secondary.
And every time I hear these liberal idiots standing up and start screaming about their rights, I just want to smack them and say, But what about your duty to your country?
What about your responsibilities to your fellow citizens?
Where is all that?
Well, here's the irony of it all.
I I get I hear people all the time say, I don't support the war, why should I pay taxes for it?
Or I don't support this wiretapping program.
If we are going to neuter the federal government's ability to fight war, we may as well not have a federal government.
Because we did not give the federal government a monopoly on force.
The only institution that has a monopoly on force in society so they could extract charitable donations disguised as income transfer payments.
We gave them a monopoly on force to fight illegitimate force back after this.
So uh Drudge has got Fred Thompson announcing or redstate.com has got them announcing this afternoon, Fred Thompson.
And then the politico has them waiting till September sixth.
Jeez, what is the Washington Post or the New York Times say?
That's where we go for our information.
I'm just kidding.
That's why I'm the fill-in.
Rush Limbaugh will be back on Tuesday.
Best of Rush on Monday.
I'm Jason Lewis from the land of ten thousand loons, and that's just the legislature.
That would be Minnesota for the unannointed.
Uh John in Washington, D.C., welcome to the program.
Good to have you on.
Yeah, uh, I don't know whether you cover this or not.
You mentioned the Washington Post just now, and uh there's an article uh on the bottom below the fold that says terrorism policy split the Democrats.
Yes.
And uh in fact the ACLU is running an internet ad showing uh Nancy Pelosi and and Harry Reid a sheep, and it says Bush wanted more power to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, and we just followed along.
This is Pelosi's talking to to Reed.
I guess that's why they call us the Democratic Leader Sheep.
Say the two farm animals in the in the edge.
Well th the whole point is that the Democrats are pissed off that they gave an extension of FISA for six months, and they can't wait to come back in September so they can change that.
And gut it.
That's exactly right.
Remember, folks, the you bring up a great point, John.
The Democrats gave an extension, how nice of FISA.
Before nineteen seventy-eight, folks, for two hundred years in the United States of America, there was no FISA court.
Were we really living in a tyranny then?
There was no FISA court at all.
Uh I did see that article in the Washington Post.
And don't forget this.
Remember in uh I think it was Ex parte Kieran, but there was the case of the German saboteurs down in Florida, where we detained them and they were one or two of them were American citizens and tried them in a military tribunal.
One I think one or two were executed.
Uh but but one one or two were citizens too.
So we're talking about non-citizens and we're trying to tie our hands behind our back.
They were citizens.
We I mean, what do you do, friends, if you've got an American citizen who is hell bent on spying, or I should say, uh overthrowing the country, working for the enemy.
Shall we spy on them?
Or should we first make certain we go to court, get the Miranda rights, and make certain he has a court appointed taxpayer funded attorney.
No, it's sooner or later you've got to say, okay, this is not a crime.
To which case many of those protections apply.
And I would want them to apply, obviously.
This is a war.
Things are different in war.
We don't read the Miranda rights on the battlefield.
Uh we we don't we don't grant them a court appointed attorney.
We don't give them the right not to incriminate themselves.
We bomb them and kill them without a hearing.
That's the difference between a war and a crime.
And that's the distinction right now between Republicans and Democrats in all of this.
And by the way, if you're worried about warrants, next time you're at the airport, you might want to ask the TSA, where's your warrant before you frisk me before you go on uh in the airport?
How do they get away with this?
There are a whole lot of exceptions to these to all of these ironclad rules that the ACLU would have you believe.
Safety and national security is one of them.
That doesn't mean there's carte blanche.
Look, it doesn't mean they can do anything.
I'm not in favor of that either.
But once you make the distinction between a crime and a war, different rules apply.
Unless you want the Supreme Court fighting your wars.
Thanks for checking in.
Let's go to Athens, Georgia, and Mike, you're next up on Russia's show.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Thanks for taking my call.
Um quick point.
Um the a caller a few callers ago said that uh we weren't supposed to uh go to war with uh uh with a nation that wasn't sovereign and all this, and I'm so tired of hearing the uh the Democrats say that uh back in nineteen ninety-two when we went to war under w under George Bush Sr. with Iraq,
um they had uh when they pulled out, when they pulled out of there, they said, uh, you have uh we're gonna claim a ceasefire and you have this much time to comply with all the UN resolutions.
The war was never declared over.
The war was still open.
If they didn't comply, we could immediately go back uh upon firing on them.
And uh Well, I mean look, we we are still in Kosovo.
There's now the you we now have Russia and Serbia balking at Kosovo independence after seventy-eight days of bombing under the Clinton administration, uh the NATO bombing, we've still got troops there and forces there, and yet there was no authorization from Congress, let alone no UN declaration.
How does that work?
Uh it's it's amazing to me.
Um it like it's the double standard thing constantly.
Not only that, but the the Great Marine battle him.
I mean, the shores of Triple E. What were we doing on the shores of Triple E?
Oh, yeah, when Jefferson dispatched forces to go after the Barbary pirates, I don't think he con he checked with Congress.
We presidents have always sent arms, in many cases troops abroad without getting a formal declaration of war.
You know, there's a great debate over whether to make that that power in the Constitution, the ability to make war or the ability to declare war.
And some constitutional scholars say the framers deliberately said, No, we'll make it declare.
Congress can do what they want, they can declare or not declare, but the president of the commander in chief has the power to make war.
That's why we have coequal branches of separation.
You cannot have, as Hamilton said, you cannot have the necessary dispatch, the expediency with a committee of five hundred and thirty-five people to fight a war.
You've got to put that in the hands of the executive.
And we have now Congress can cut off funds, there's no question about that.
And they did it in Vietnam and we got the killing fields and all the rest.
I don't know that Americans want to see that again.
Um but the this whole notion of usurping Article three of the Constitution is is getting under my skin a little bit.
And yours, I can tell.
Let's go to San Antonio once again and Michael, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Yeah, hi, Jason.
Listen, um, I tell you what, if the if the holes at ground zero did not convince every single American then we are at war, I don't know what will.
Um the great battle as far as these guys are concerned are is yet to come.
Um these groups are actively seeking nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and that should be our number one priority when we're considering these FISA and wiretapping issues.
Unfortunately, and I really hate to say it, I don't think every American is going to wake up and and quash this democratic push under this guise of civil liberties until we're attacked again.
I I really hate to say it.
Well, I d I disagree.
I think the Republicans, and this is the problem with the Republican Party in many many areas, they are so timid and they are so weak to stand up for the things they believe in, if they only would, and the last guy to do it was the Gipper, they would find that the American people are on their side.
I think some of the callers we've got today who are disagreeing with me about the FISA restrictions are in the minority.
I think you ask once again the average American, should we spy on enemies, whether they're terrorists or in a formal declaration of war or just people plotting to overthrow the government, the answer is a categorical yes.
I would agree one hundred percent with you.
So let's take let's don't be afraid of this issue.
Let's make it a campaign issue and run with it.
The Democrats look again, the Democrats we know don't want to be in Iraq.
They don't want to be any place else in the Middle East militarily, they don't want to, they don't want military tribunals, they don't want to spy on terrorists, they don't want the CIA and the FBI to share intel, they don't want profiling, they don't well, okay, what do you want in the war on they don't want to fight the war on terror?
There's your campaign issue.
They don't want to fight it.
But the only way that America is gonna fight back against the Democrats, yeah.
You know, I I just keep coming back to it.
It's gonna take another waking up of America like 911 woke us up, unfortunately.
You know, it it's our nature and always has been our nature to to forget about the pain and rest back on our haunts and get where we are.
If that's the case, why didn't it wake us up?
I mean, you say nine eleven woke us up, yeah, maybe for a couple of years, but here we are back to square one.
So if we get hit again and another three thousand people die for for what, I don't know, if we're not willing to take the the battle to the enemy.
You know, my focus today is who knows how Iraq's gonna turn out.
I happen to be sympathetic, but I don't know the answer.
But I do know that that since the church committee hearings of which Walter Mondale was such a a part that we gutted the CIA and the intelligence capabilities, and by the way, the Clinton administration did that as well.
I mean, you take a look at what's happened during the m the military spending during the Clinton years when a hundred billion dollars in real terms was cut from the military, the CIA operations, its analysis, uh much of that was slashed.
I mean, at the you know, we closed bases in the nineteen nineties.
All of that, that's the issue that bothers me.
What are we doing domestically to keep the homeland safe?
You can't go back to this sort of uh again, n late nineteen seventies ACLU type vision of America in in this sort of battle.
It's not going to work.
We've got to if if we neuter the federal government of its major responsibility, then why are you and I paying taxes?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I I agree with you.
The elections and campaigning is the only way we're ultimately going to get this result.
Yeah.
Hey, thanks for checking in on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Jason Lewis.
Don't go away.
More coming right up after this short break.
1-800-282-2882.
We've got about uh what, uh fifteen minutes or so left in the program today.
I'm Jason Lewis from the uh glorious state of Minnesota, land of Ventura, Franken, Mondale.
And I'm still sane.
Melissa in Lafayette, Indiana, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason.
Hi.
Hi, actually, it's the Louisiana.
Excuse me, Louisiana.
That's all right.
Um I'm really pleased to be talking in.
I'm kind of nervous, so bear with me.
But uh, I wanted to talk about the Virginia uh check tragedy.
Yes.
And two main points I want to make.
The first one, um, I live right here on campus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and um I have just as much right to know what's going on in my school as those other people have the right to privacy.
And the thing about the right to privacy is the parents don't even have the right under those laws to know what's going on with their own children.
And that's the biggest outrage there.
Um another thing is um Well, you you bring up an excellent point.
I mean, it takes a lay person to cut through the legalese, but you're quite right.
The our our old traditional common law rights to privacy were nothing of the sort that courts of today have made them into.
For instance, you're the right to privacy ends when you have a contract.
If you contract something, if I contract with you to say, Oh, I don't know, here, develop these pictures for me.
There's a contractual implicit arrangement that you're gonna see the photos, right?
There was a case in there was a case in Minnesota where I'm from where somebody looking at photos that were embarrassing to a couple of individuals, that turned out to be a violation of privacy.
It it's it's gone it's gone over the deep end there.
Yeah, and and another thing too is um even though the people are not minors anymore, their parents are sending under the school, paying for the school, they should have the right to know what's going on with their kids, and if they're in trouble, they should have the right to decide whether or not to take them out.
Um also uh I want to commend the university I live at uh uh U uh ULL because last week they did a rule where um all the kids would turn in their cell phone numbers, and if there was an emergency on campus or anything that all the school would notify all the kids through their cell phone through text messaging, which is brilliant because I mean, for the Virginia Czech tragedy, those people who were killed in the dorms a couple hours before the shooting happened, I mean, I'm surprised.
I was appalled to know that the police weren't out there, nothing was cordoned off, the people weren't being evacuated.
If there's a loose shooter on the campus, you know, why why would you not adjust the.
Well, the report today said that probably wouldn't have helped much.
That they could have done a few things, a few things more expeditiously, but if this guy was intent on killing people, he was probably going to do it.
I'm more interested in keeping people like that off campus.
I mean, I I had said earlier that Virginia Tech had uh or Virginia, I should say, became the first state to pass some laws over concealed care.
Actually, what I meant to say was Virginia became the first state to pass legislation that bars colleges and universities from punishing or expelling students for attempting to commit suicide or having suicidal thoughts or other mental health problems.
Now now, frankly, if you're if I'm a parent of concern about your safety, I'm not I'm not too keen on that legislation.
I don't know how you feel.
Right.
And um I don't know, I just was really impressed with ULL's um policy about the text messaging because I I drive around campus all the time and everyone's on their cell phone.
So if any emergency happened like that, everyone would be notified immediately.
And I I want I want to be able to run, you know, I want to be able to know what's going on to at least give me the right to run away to go somewhere.
To run away.
Do you think anybody should be there that may just potentially fight back?
Yeah, I think the police, I don't know about the students being armed, but uh the police definitely that's ridiculous that they're not allowed to be armed.
The students, I I don't know that let me ask you a question.
You're just a youngster at college.
Uh I re I remember college and my freshman year was the toughest three years of my life.
Uh And you're just a youngster there.
Let me ask you a question.
Would you want when you grow up and have a little kid, well, you know, a little squirt, a little Melissa.
And you send them off to second grade, to third grade.
And their men say in the community, or there have been horrible cases of shootings, people bringing guns to school and shooting or something.
They're like, I don't want to say column buying, but who knows where it could happen, right?
Would you feel better or worse if someone, say a faculty member or the principal, was properly trained in the use of a firearm and was there for defensive purposes.
Oh, but still better.
Well, they're gun-free zones now.
Definitely.
Yeah.
But I the faculty that obviously, Melissa, the uh liberal left interfering with your phone call, but thanks for the points.
All good.
I appre appreciate the call in Sacramento, California.
Mark, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, it's Mark.
How are you doing?
I'm doing wonderful today.
How are you doing?
I'm fine.
Earlier today you would have asked a rhetorical question why the Clintons get so much money.
Yes.
And I think that the historical record would go to prove that the Clintons are not only for sale, they actually pay off.
Usually when you give money to a politician, you might get a little access or go to a cocktail party, have some some chance to make your point.
What the Clintons, all the way back to Arkansas, if you pony up enough money, you can get anything done.
In fact free latex gloves?
Excuse me?
Free latex gloves.
You know this guy, I mean, how weird.
This latest fundraising scandal revolves around the guy that defrauded a bunch of people.
That's why he was a fugitive over a latex glove scandal.
There you go.
What were the Clinton?
Well, maybe Bill was looking for free latex gloves.
We don't know this.
Hey, listen, if uh you really want to make money, uh all you gotta do is get Hillary about a half a million dollars, and you could probably get a return ten or twenty-fold administration.
You mean in cattle futures, of course.
No, you'd read the Wall Street Journal for that.
That's how you get those cats.
No, it's an interesting point.
And then there were accusations of American technology going overseas during the Clinton administration and all these Asian uh businessmen and women, some out of Hong Kong, some elsewhere, uh, getting access to the White House.
I mean, folks, what what Mark is talking about, what we've been talking about is if you thought all of this nonsense and all these salacious details and all the fundraising scandals and the Buddhist temple fundraisers that St. Al Gore attended, if you think you want to get rid of that, don't vote for Hillary, because it's all coming back and it's already started.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh today.
Don't go away, we'll come back and wrap things up after this.
All right, time to squeeze in uh one or two more phone calls today, Thursday tomorrow.
I'll be back one more day for the big guy, Rush Limbaugh.
He's uh I think he's wrapped up the uh golf by now.
I think so.
He'll be back eight nineteenth all, exactly.
He will be back uh he'll be back on Tuesday, of course.
Best of rush on Monday for all the affiliates, you don't want to miss that.
Always a treat.
I'm Jason Lewis, and this is Tom in Bethlehem PA.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Uh my question, getting back to change the subject a little bit, is to get back to the infrastructure of our highways, but instead of highway bridges, railroad bridges.
I don't know what part of uh government, uh federal government, Congress, the railroad act, whatever.
Who inspects these bridges?
I mean, you got Union Pacific, you got uh Norfolk, Southern CS.
What makes you think what makes you think there's a problem there?
Oh, I don't think there's a problem, but I just wonder uh if if if if they're being checked.
I know they they do check the rail here and they've been doing some welding in the city.
Let me tell you something in in in the in the downtown Bethlehem area.
Right.
The private railroad companies have a much, much greater incentive due to something called market discipline to check their infrastructure, to check their railroads and their bridges, then do then does the government.
You know, it always cracks me up.
Government is the only institution in America that can fail and then say, that's why we need more money.
And that's really you think about it, they were responsible for the highway, the construction.
I'll be honest with you, I'll trust somebody whose livelihood depends on this, whose profit depends on this, more so than I will bureaucrats that where it really doesn't matter what they do, to be honest with you.
I'm Jason Lewis, filling in for Rush today.
I'll be back tomorrow as well.
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