Rush Limbaugh Program - August 31, 2007, Friday, Hour #2

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Aug. 31, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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August 31, 2007, Friday, Hour #2

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	Well, thank you once again.
	It is great uh to be here filling in for rush.
	I tell you, filling in for Rush is a little bit like being Zaja Gabor's eighth husband on their honeymoon.
	You kind of know what you're supposed to do.
	You're just wondering if you can make it interesting.
	I don't know.
	It just you think about it.
	1 800 282 2882.
	I am Jason Lewis, filling in for the great one, Rush Limbaugh, who I would say right about now is on the 14th T, probably Snerdley, uh HR, probably what, two, three hundred par by now?
	Fourteenth T, two, three hundred, that's Rush pretty much scratch.
	I guess tell him when he comes back, tell him I said that.
	I think Russia's a scratch golfer.
	There, it's out, it's true.
	Scott from Texas got this Iraq thing going again, and there's a survey out now from Zagby that most Americans say Iraq war is not lost.
	That's right.
	A majority of Americans, fifty-four percent, believe the United States has not lost the war.
	A third of Democrats don't think the war is lost.
	So why are we keep getting from the institutional media this notion that all is lost?
	That the Iraq is a failure.
	Well, there's one group that I know of that definitely doesn't think Iraq is lost, and they should know they've been there, most of them.
	It's called Vets for Freedom.
	They're running some great ads, and I personally know the uh the guy that's working hard to get this group more exposure, and his name is Pete Hagseth, and he joins us now.
	Pete, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
	Jason, thanks for having me.
	Good uh good to talk with you, my friend.
	You're stationed now, you were in Iraq, of course, but stationed now in New York City.
	Which one is more dangerous?
	Well, on a political level, I'm gonna have to say New York.
	Yeah, to be sure.
	Listen, Vets for Freedom is long overdue because every time some uh disgruntled ex Iraq vet or uh lifelong military man comes out, and God bless him, every you know, freedom of speech and all of that.
	But every time they come out against the war, they get twenty four seven coverage.
	Your group, Vets for Freedom, is designed to put forth the other view that guess what?
	The majority of vets and most people in the military think this is a good idea, it's winnable, and we are winning.
	You're absolutely right.
	I mean, we exist to elevate the voice of that vast majority of veterans who believe in the mission, they've been there, they've seen how it can succeed, and they've also seen uh the dangers of of failing and and what is at stake in Iraq, and they understand that.
	So we exist to elevate that powerful story of of of that day to day grind that goes on in Iraq and how these guys are making progress.
	And uh you know, we're just fortunate enough to have had some success and and re you know why we're having success?
	Because the guys on the ground in Iraq have adjusted their strategy, they're doing it right, they're making progress every day, the surge is working, and we're just here to amplify that.
	What was not done right?
	I mean, debathification, I believe, was a mistake.
	Uh what else was not done right at the outset?
	Sure, I I think we were slow to adapt to realities on the ground.
	Uh that we had a uh uh conventional military using conventional tactics, trying to fight an asymmetrical unconventional war.
	And when those didn't work, we were slow to adapt as a military and as and as a you know, the Pentagon and other institutions.
	And we're finally now shifted into fighting a counterinsurgency, toward protecting the population.
	In the past we tried to have you know just have elections and quickly prop up an Iraqi army and and police and then draw back without ever providing the security conditions that are so necessary for political progress.
	You see, that's what Petraeus understands that you can't have you know benchmarks or political progress without secure streets, and that's what he's doing right now with that.
	Yeah, I want to talk about Petraeus because there's a move afoot to already delegitimize what he's going to say in September.
	Uh but let me talk about the Shia influence there, Maliki and company and and and the current government, and that is some of some people say the security forces there are still dominated by Shias who are engaged in some very nasty behavior.
	Is is that what you saw?
	Is that what you're hearing from from Iraq?
	Well, I mean, in certain areas there are uh there's no doubt that there's been infiltration into in in a lot of the the Shia police uh networks, but that's something uh that Petraeus is certainly dealing with, and and one thing you can one way you can affect that is by standing up local institutions, local police forces.
	If you look at Anbar province, they didn't they're not deploying Shia uh policemen into Anbar to police the streets.
	They've got local uh Sunnis there signing up for the police force en masse to secure their own neighborhoods.
	I think that's an important development uh in in removing the sectarian element.
	And and General Petraeus uh I think has uh identified what police commanders have been corrupt, they've been removed, and they're doing everything they can to build a professional force.
	I think if you really take a hard look at the Iraqi army there, It has improved a great deal.
	It's taking over much more responsibility in Baghdad, and it's because Americans have set the conditions for them to do so.
	And and as I say, the patr the Petraeus report coming up next month is already being uh preempted, if you will, by those who are saying, well, he's just going to take directions from the White House, this or that.
	Uh you know about General Petraeus.
	Tell the listeners about him.
	Well, General Petraeus, i i he's he's been uh on the lead on in Iraq the entire time.
	He led the the entire time.
	He led the hundred and first into Iraq in two thousand three.
	He uh trained did his best to train the Iraqi security forces, then came back and wrote the counterinsurgency manual that he's now applying in Baghdad.
	He is the best and the brightest that the American military has to offer, and uh his principles and what he's applying in Baghdad are are working.
	I mean, what happened after three and a half years is the best ideas within the institution have have come to the fore, and General Petraeus and his counterinsurgency strategy of protecting the population are having great success.
	So while it may be i i it was far in coming and way too long in coming, we finally do have the right leadership with the right strategy.
	We are win we we are winning.
	We are moving in that direction.
	And and Americans, they want a winning strategy, and that's when you referred to that poll of a majority of Americans uh believing that w you know it's not locked, it's because Americans want to win, Jason.
	And they want but they need to see a winning strategy, and they haven't seen one.
	And now they're seeing one and they're turning around, and then we're just doing everything we can to amplify the case.
	Yeah, the double standard, the double standard on the part of the opponents is is deafening too.
	You got these guys saying the war is lost, Harry Reid, Representative James Moran, all these people.
	And yet they can't muster the votes in Congress to uh for immediate withdrawal because they know what what happened after April nineteen seventy five in Saigon when we left all of those people in the killing fields, millions died, tens of thousands were put in prison camps.
	You know, I have a different view of the Vietnam War.
	You're just a kid.
	I'm uh I was a lot of fun before electricity, let me tell you.
	Uh the the point here is we lost that battle, but we won the Cold War.
	And anybody that thinks, you know, surrendering doesn't have ramifications, ask the Vietnamese, ask the Cambodians.
	And then then Soviet the Soviets were on the march in Mozambique in Afghanistan, in Angola, in Central America in the late nineteen seventies when our foreign policy was weak and vacillating, thank you, Jimmy Carter.
	So any you know, uh you can sit here and criticize the Iraq conflict, and I've been critical of it as well.
	But you better have an alternative solution.
	Because we know what would happen in a vacuum, and you know what?
	I don't hear any alternative solutions from Harry Reid or James Moran or all these people that say the war is lost and then go visit the troops and can't figure out why the troops are turning their cheek to them.
	Oh, it's exactly right.
	And when they come back, they say, you know what, and and the House the House Majority Whip uh James Flyburn said it would be a real big problem for Congressional Democrats if a positive report came back, if things improve.
	I mean we've got a a segment of the That was a signal to the mainstream media, by the way.
	That was a signal to the mainstream media we better do something about Petraeus and we better do it now.
	Yeah.
	When you've got a segment so invested in defeat, uh it can be i it's it's a difficult oblig uh um obstacle to get around.
	But there are also good signs in Pakistan.
	Uh I have been more critical of Musherif than some others.
	Uh and and now if you've got the former leader coming back, Bhutto and a few others, and you've got him supposedly, allegedly getting ready to step down from his army post, and you can join the moderate forces or the more secular forces there with Musherif and fight that extremism in Pakistan, which absolutely has to be done, has to be fought, that might be a good sign too.
	Oh, uh absolutely.
	I think we we have to do everything we can to empower the forces of moderation, which is what makes Iraq so important.
	When you referred to Vietnam and the and the fallout, you know, the fallout of Iraq of a failed state, of a defeat would be it would be incredible.
	And you understand that, uh, Jason.
	These people the jihadists that we're facing seek not only, you know, to destroy uh us on some level or another, but but to impose their will on the populations of that own their own country and and uh of that region.
	So we're dealing with a radical ideology that wants to spread and is looking to Iraq as the central front, and what we're doing to defeat Al Qaeda and and radical uh Shia Iranian backed elements is gonna have a huge impact on what that region looks like and what America's interests are in the future.
	I I'll be honest with you though, I'm not one of those that think that thinks we can militarily march into Iran.
	I we are we don't have the troops.
	I mean you can do it maybe if you reinstate the draft thanks to Barney Frank.
	But I, like Reagan and Andrew Jackson am opposed to that.
	I do think, however, we can look at Iran like we looked at uh eastern Europe and fight it that way, or fight it with with all sorts of powers and rhetorical Powers and radio free this and radio free that and supporting the dissidents in Iran and keeping the economic sanctions on the pressure that way, because you're right, a lot of it's stemming from there.
	But frankly, a lot of it's stemming from all over the region.
	Sure.
	Yeah, I mean, we've got ins insurgents flowing into Iraq from from Syria.
	Uh, you know, when I was in Tamar, we had, you know, there was plenty of uh Saudi folks from Saudi Arabia instigating the Al Qaeda violence there.
	So there's a lot of countries, including Iran invested in the outcome in Iraq, which is what makes it so important to ensure that we do not leave a haven behind if you don't allow uh you know radical elements to take control of the country.
	Pete Hageseth from Vets for Freedom, you've got some great commercials running right now and some very moving ones.
	Keep up the great work.
	If people want to find more about vets for freedom, uh where do they go?
	They can go to VetsForFreedom.org.
	Our ads are on there, and then there's also some more great ads on FreedomsWatch.org.
	They've been running some with uh Iraq veterans as well.
	Always good to talk with you, my friend.
	Thank you, Jason.
	Uh you'd be well.
	I'm Jason Lewis, in for the great one Rush Limbaugh today on open line Friday, back after this.
	All right, our thanks once again to Pete Hageseth and Vets for Freedom, great group.
	Check it out.
	Jason Lewis back here atop the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan, in for the great one Rush Limbaugh today.
	Rush will be back on Tuesday.
	Best of Rush on Monday, a well-deserved break for the king of all radio.
	Tony Snow announced his resignation uh today, resigning, I believe immediately.
	Uh no, it's September 14th, I think it was.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, he's going uh and the beleaguered Snow, health-wise anyway.
	We wish him the best.
	Great guy, had a chance to meet Tony once or twice.
	Very, very nice man, the White House press secretary, he's announcing his resignation today, tries to uh we'll do some other things.
	He's vague about his future right now.
	But I got I go back to an article Tony Snow wrote, and we just got we just got done talking a little bit about Iraq.
	And there is this myth out there that Bush and the Republicans are in trouble because of Iraq.
	Would that it were true?
	There's nothing there's nothing to back that up.
	I'll tell you why, quite frankly, the Republicans are in trouble, the Republican Congress and to a lesser degree the administration, and that is spending's up fifty percent in the last five years.
	Gerald Ford in two and a half years had sixty-six vetoes.
	We've had about one or two in the last five or six years.
	The GOP controlled Senate, when they had control, failed to act on cutting the estate tax or making the estate tax reductions permanent, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, reforming the AMT, better yet, abolishing the outrageous alternative minimum tax, drilling an anwar, giving the president the line item veto, welfare reform two, the gang of fourteen and immigration.
	The Republicans failed to act on that.
	That's why they're in trouble.
	Tony Snow wrote in a column back in 2005 that a number of administration insiders had begun boasting about big government conservatism.
	Oblivious to the fact that, quote, big government does not conserve nor preserve, it crushes and digests, devouring institutions that challenge its supremacy.
	You want to you want an example or a manifestation of that?
	You want to know why the Republicans are in a bit of trouble after row six?
	And why, you know, why the culling of some of these Republicans who resign or quit or get defeated isn't necessarily a bad thing if we can get more Reaganite conservatives to take their place.
	Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in Newsweek earlier this year, bemoaned the fact that the anti-government types have, quote, an unhealthy disdain for government, a reflexive pre preference for markets, and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice, close quote.
	This was a former speechwriter to the president writing in Newsweek that anti-government types.
	Certainly I hope he wasn't talking about the Gipper, have, quote, an unhealthy disdain for government, a reflexive preference for markets, and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice, close quote.
	That is precisely what the GOP ought to be standing for.
	We have a national socialist party.
	It's the Democrat.
	We need to be the capitalist party.
	And once we rediscover those virtues, and once we go back to a Reaganite vision, remember Reagan ran on limiting government, on promoting growth.
	Actually, Reagan ran on tuition tax credits and abolishing the Department of Education.
	There wasn't any child no child left behind, which is now turned into no tragedy left behind for Democrats exploiting every misfortune.
	But I digress.
	The point here is it has nothing to do with Iraq.
	The Republicans became too comfortable with power.
	They started governing like Democrats, and that's when the base got demoralized.
	And that's what's going to have to change to get the base uh energized again.
	By the way, speaking of that, Fred Thompson is almost in.
	He's going to announce his candidacy coming up what?
	Uh, let's see, September.
	Well, it's early next week, I believe it is.
	I don't have the article right in front of me, but Fred Thompson is effectively in.
	Uh so you know it's what's fascinating, and I'm not endorsing any candidate on the Rush Limbaugh show, wouldn't have dream of doing that.
	What was fascinating, though, is why is Thompson getting these poll numbers before he even announces?
	Because a lot of the faithful, a lot of the Republican base has been.
	Well, they're demoralized.
	They've been they've been taken down this road too long, and they're very skeptical of any of the candidates.
	And that's because of moderation.
	That's because they listen to the consultant and say, You've got to move to the center.
	You know, the center is precisely where that skunk in the road was when I hit him last week.
	1 800 282 2882.
	I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush up in Waltham, Massachusetts.
	Ernie, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Hi.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	Sure.
	I'm a four and a half year veteran of the firing at Korean What.
	God bless you, sir.
	And though I'm uh up way up in my seventies, I happen to have a young son who was in a Marine was in Iraq in the beginning.
	What I want to say is that the media, when they talk about the conflicts this country's gone through, they go from World War II when they slide into Vietnam.
	In Korea, we lost as many men.
	Listen, as many men as are lost in in Vietnam in one third the time to fighting was three times as intense.
	The 1950 class at West Point had the highest casualty rate of any class at any war in the twentieth century, thirty-four percent.
	And to be labeled a forgotten war is totally outrageous, and I uh I it sticks in my claw all these years because of you know it's worse than that.
	Some on the hard left label it a lost effort, uh a wasted effort.
	Let me tell you something.
	When you look at these policies of containment, whether it's Korea, which did have some containment, or Vietnam, which eventually folded, they helped win the Cold War.
	Listen, can I say one other thing?
	You sure can.
	I had like I say, because I'm in my late 70s, but I happen to have a young son who's a Marine, and one of the things that's not being publicized in the media at all, is the extreme high suicide rate of the military in Iraq, and that's being swept under the rug.
	It's highest suicide rate in any war.
	And you know, this whole thing is totally out of control.
	Well, that's what they said about Korea.
	Do you agree with that?
	Well, I don't know what the suicide rate was in Korea, but I'm not talking about the suicide rate.
	I'm talking about the critics of that conflict, but long before long before Pamun John, they were saying out of control.
	And it's it's hurting people.
	Were you do you agree with that?
	Sure, it was hurting people.
	And we're still there.
	Do you think it was true?
	Look, Mike, are we gonna be in Iraq in another fifty years?
	We'll do what it takes to win.
	I don't I mean, I'm tired of these timetables.
	Are you gonna say, well, it's just too difficult, let's just fold, let's just draw in this sort of neo-isolationist foreign policy, and all in the world will be right.
	At what at what point do you say there's a clear and present danger, a national security threat after three thousand people perish in downtown Manhattan?
	I mean, let me say this.
	When the m a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago, when the Marines had a problem in Fallujah, why didn't we go in and drop leaflets and say and briefly said to the people, you know, vacate the land and then we're gonna come in and we're gonna do saturation bombing.
	They did nothing.
	And the Marines took a beating.
	You know, in Korea, when they retreated from Chosen Reservoir to the province of Huna the Port of Hunan, there was a failed napalm with drop, and it landed on the Marines, and the Marines in the perimeter were shooting their own men because they couldn't get in to save them, and that's fact.
	And you know, this this whole thing about trying to quote unquote America save the world, it's just not gonna work.
	Well, I will tell you something, my friend, and I gotta let you go, but I thank God for the troops in Korea and Vietnam.
	I thank God for Grenada.
	I thank God for the Contras, and I thank God for everybody that persevered after a long, long twilight struggle after Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe to Stalin, who turned out to be an even more formidable enemy, and then against the Democrats, you know, trying to vacillate and their weakness, we persevered, and you know, in nineteen eighty-nine, thanks to the Gipper, uh, you know, not to mention the opponents there, we won the Cold War.
	Now we may have had a lot of ugly battles, but in the final analysis, we stopped Soviet expansionism, which killed anywhere from ten to twenty to thirty million, depending on what chapter you read in the black book of communism.
	So I'm tired of the apologists for this pacifism.
	These are worthy and noble efforts, and we won.
	And if we persevere, persevere, we will do the same thing in this contract.
	You know, God bless Ernie and everybody who uh who's fought in foreign wars or any particular war, and I don't want to traumatize too many liberals, but I hate to break this to you, gang.
	Rob Reiner did not win the Cold War.
	You got all these revisionists running around saying we were right on Vietnam, we were right on you know, after since Vietnam, I wonder if there's any aspect of military uh projection by America that these guys would support.
	I mean, you you didn't they didn't support the Reagan buildup, they didn't support deploying the Persines in Europe, they didn't support support SDI, they didn't support Grenada.
	Uh Jimmy Carter wouldn't support the Contras.
	I mean Sandinisa took over.
	Remember what happened after Vietnam.
	After April uh 1975, when that horrific picture of the helicopter leaving the embassy in Saigon and people clinging to it.
	The Soviets were on the march everywhere.
	In Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Central America, you name it.
	And and what happened?
	Well, when we pulled out of Vietnam that sent a signal.
	Now it wasn't the final signal.
	Fortunately, thanks to Ronald Reagan, uh, I'll be blunt, thanks to Ronald Reagan.
	We defeated the Soviets because he knew their economic system couldn't match SDI.
	And the proudest moment in my adult life was in Reagan walked out of Reykjavik in Iceland and had that stern look on his face.
	And Gorbachev says, Well, if you just if you just give up SDI, we'll do the zero option and all of that.
	And Reagan, against the advice of all the State Department uh diplomats at foggy bottom said, No, not gonna do it.
	I remember the Gipper watching that.
	He just said one of the little cock of his head and just Well, well, no.
	You know, that was it.
	And guess what?
	Later on, after the Berlin Wall went went down and the Soviets opened up glasnost, they said, yeah, we couldn't keep up with SDI.
	He was right.
	The our economy, centrally planned economies, you know, they never work, folks.
	They never work, as Hayek and others have said, you can't possibly guess what thousands, millions of entrepreneurs want to produce, what millions of consumers want.
	There is no market discipline, there is no invisible hand in a centrally planned economy.
	And that's why they can never keep up.
	When you harness back back that incentive to produce, when you harness back capital or ratchet it back, you get less production.
	And there's only one thing that counts in economics, and that's production.
	It's not redistribution of wealth, it's production.
	Because without that, you'll have nothing to reproduce or to redistribute.
	Anyway, I could go on for hours on this, but I won't because it's open line Friday in Lawrence, Kansas.
	Hank, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
	Hi.
	Jason, first I just want to salute you and thank you for your efforts.
	Uh I am a retired Marine.
	I served for 21 years.
	In 1984, I was part of the counterinsurgency counterintelligence program that was going on down based out of Panama.
	So I saw intimately what was going on in that world in Central America.
	I'm a huge fan of Reagan.
	You mean the Ortega brothers didn't have our best interests at heart?
	I'm telling you.
	Um, everybody that's wet behind that.
	I was a 2674, which is the Spanish cryptologic linguist.
	My wife is a uh Panamanian um that has become since become an American citizen.
	And uh we were absolutely right on what we were doing.
	You know, we made so much progress down there as a part of Reagan and a part of conservative uh ideology and thinking.
	There's a reason why they called him Cabeza de Money, uh referring to Jimmy Carter as peanut head, because he had no clue of what he was doing and the damage that was caused because of his politics.
	I remember Jimmy Carter's human rights policy.
	It was to say, we are not going to trade, do business with any country that hasn't adopted the very s uh definition of quote unquote human rights that Jimmy Carter thought was proper.
	So we were we were punishing countries that were who were our allies.
	I mean, really, let's be blunt about this.
	And I'm not I'm not gonna sit here and defend the Shah of Iran, but if you want to talk about the rising Shia Crescent in that part of the the country, it started after the fall of the Shah of Iran.
	And who'd engineered that?
	So, I mean, you've got a point.
	I absolutely support you.
	I want to Let you know here my phone's getting ready to die, but I support the veterans for uh freedom.
	You bet.
	Uh I'm a retired Marine, like I said, uh, my company, Devil Dog Brew uh supports the military, and we're doing something special for the vets that are over there and the active duty members that are serving in Iraq.
	Good for you, Hank.
	Well, thank you, sir, and thanks for the call, and thanks for your service, by the way.
	And you know, he's talking about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or Castro in Cuba, who's lauded.
	I remember there was a journalism survey at the univers at Columbia University years ago, and you had these future journalists, students who held Fidel Castro in higher esteem than Ronald Reagan.
	There was a survey.
	Kind of tells you all you need to know about the mainstream media.
	But what and it's ironic too, because the first thing these tyrants do, especially the the uh the totalitarians on the left is what?
	Shut down the press.
	In Cuba, in in Nicaragua, and now Chavez, who's expropriating private property and shutting down the press, and by the way, making himself a a president with only I can only serve 40 terms.
	After that, I'm out of here.
	I don't care what you say, 40's it for me.
	It's it's remarkable how the the the double standard again on totalitarian regimes from the quote unquote left versus the quote unquote right.
	And there is no difference.
	There's only tyranny and freedom.
	It doesn't matter whether it's Stalin or Hitler in the final analysis.
	Stalin may have killed more than Hitler.
	I mean, if you talk about the I mean, all all go get the black book of communism.
	You really ought to read that because you're not going to see that in in the newsprint.
	Because for one reason or another, the liberal left has this love affair, this fascination with totalitarianism if it's done by a commie.
	Very odd.
	You don't see an outrage over Hugo Chavez, except in the mind of Pat Robertson, but I'm not going to go there.
	Steve in Tampa, Florida, you're on the Jason Lewis show.
	Hi.
	Or excuse me, the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis filling in.
	Yeah.
	Um you know, I lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for five years.
	I got a call from a friend yesterday that lives in Betendorf and said you wouldn't believe what a judge did in in Iowa with the gay marriage thing.
	And and my argument as a conservative Republican and the base is demoralized right now.
	Is there a better argument to to elect a conservative in two thousand and eight just for federal judges alone?
	And I realize this was a state judge, but I mean, what they can't accomplish at the ballot box, they they they want to do through the judiciary.
	Yeah, you're right.
	And that's that's where Bush has really, really done well.
	I mean, Harriet Meyer is notwithstanding.
	You've got some quality judges he's appointed.
	And look, people always ask me, Jason, what is originalism, what is strict constructionism, what is this adherence that we want from our judges?
	It's quite simple.
	It's an adherence to legislative deference, it's an adherence to enumerated powers, and it's an adherence to state prerogative or federalism.
	That's it.
	And what does that mean?
	It means enumerated powers doctrine, which everybody's forgotten when you talk about federal smoking bans for crying out loud, is the notion that we have all the rights.
	We give the federal government the power to do certain things, and guess what?
	We enumerated those in the federal document.
	If it isn't in the Constitution, here's a novel idea for John Edwards.
	They can't do it.
	And yet you get activist judges who read all sorts of things in the Ninth Amendment, in the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause, trying to read things into the Constitution that simply isn't there.
	A federal ban on smoking is not is not constitutional.
	Period.
	In fact, I'll give you an example, Steve.
	Well, at least when they tried to do the misguided prohibition, they were intellectually honest enough to say, well, we've got to amend the Constitution.
	Because there is no federal power to ban alcohol.
	Now it's just we'll get a judge to uphold a federal ban on smoking or anything else.
	And so what what we've l what we've lost here, I should say, is the notion that judges should stay out of things that are public policy matters.
	They interpret laws.
	That's about it.
	So i the the notion of legislative deference says if the citizens of Iowa want gay marriage, they need to go to the legislature and pass a law.
	And if they don't, and they prohibit it, just like they prohibit prostitution, they prohibit you know, you talk about privacy rights and all of this nonsense.
	Where is the privacy rights in the myriad of usury laws?
	You know what a usury law is?
	It says if I want to loan you money, I can only do it at a certain interest rate.
	If I go higher, I'm I'm a loan shark.
	Now that's private, that's a private transaction between you and me, is it not?
	And you know what?
	If you look at if you look at the people of Batawa, they would Never.
	They would never amend their constitution to allow gay marriage.
	Never.
	Never in a million years.
	And here's by the way, let me interrupt you for just a second.
	Here, let's connect the dot here.
	Let's bring this full circle.
	You know, Joe Bush has been good on judges.
	Most of the Republican faithful believe what you believe.
	But then you had the specter of Messrs.
	Lindsey Graham, the John McCain Wannabe of South Carolina, and John McCain trying to do what?
	They almost, with the gang of fourteen, almost filibustered the good Bush judges.
	Now you talk about demoralizing the base.
	There you have it.
	Oh, and and that is that you know, I Ronald Reagan is absolutely my idol.
	And when when George W. Bush was elected, I was very, very hopeful, but but you you just see some things, it's bad, it's immigration, it's it's it's so many things.
	And it's not a rat.
	And it's not a rat.
	Can I say can I say one one thing on Iraq and the highest honor I ever had was getting a getting invited to uh a Marines uh commissioning?
	You know, I would love for for the president and and for others to make the argument that, you know, I don't know what the exact numbers were, but how many people did we lose on the for the Battle of Normandy?
	We lose a lot of troops, and it was it was worth it.
	And you know what?
	It's it's you know, you lose one troop at the end of the year, and we were losing the there were a number of times where we were losing the war, and it could have gone either way had it not been for this or that.
	So, yes, i if we had the same sort of weakness and vacillation now.
	I remember who was the famous World War II reporter, uh was it Ernie Pyle?
	Was that right?
	I can't remember uh HR, but I think it was Ernie Powell, but he used to r send reports back to the domestic press talking about our boys had a good day today.
	Our boys took the hill.
	Can you imagine any reporter today referring in that sort of of deference to our boys?
	Why, that's not journalism.
	I'm Bernie Shaw.
	I I I'm a citizen of the world.
	Oh, I'm not an American.
	No, you are.
	You're an American first and a journalist second, because without being an American, you wouldn't have anything to write about.
	I gotta go.
	Jason Lewis in for the great one, Rush Limbaugh on open line Friday.
	1 800 282 2882.
	I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh.
	What a great honor this has been.
	Another hour coming up.
	Don't go away.
	Rush will be back on Tuesday.
	The best of Rush on Monday, which will sure to be a stellar program as they all are.
	Back to the phones we go in Atlanta, Georgia.
	Jim, you're on open line Friday.
	Hi.
	Hey, Jason.
	Well, I have a question I have yet to hear one person uh write or speak about, and that is why wasn't Richard Armitage prosecuted for uh leaking Valerie Plame's name.
	Could it be?
	Could it possibly be because Valerie Plame wasn't really classified?
	Well, she really wasn't a clandestine agent?
	Could that possibly be?
	And do you suppose that might come out if they did prosecute him?
	Yes, well, you know, the woman that helped write the law, Victoria Tunzing, testified to Congress that guess what?
	I think it was called the Espionage Identities Act of 1982, did not cover Valerie.
	The woman that wrote the help write the law.
	I mean that that gives the whole thing away.
	What her testimony alone should have at least given pause, if not stopped at cold.
	Not only that, you know, what you've got here is a whistleblower, and the whistleblower's name was Carl Rove.
	Think about this.
	You had a what I call, I'll be honest with you, I call it a coup within the CIA.
	What is Valerie Plame or anybody else in the CIA doing undercutting the stated policy of the administration, the guy they putatively work for?
	What are they doing?
	Sending her husband knowing full well the report was done in advance, in effect.
	What are they doing to that to the president?
	Well, well, is there sabotage within the CIA?
	So naturally they do this to try to undercut the administration.
	What does Carl Rove do?
	He confirms that look, there's something funny going on.
	That's all he did.
	He wasn't charged with anything either.
	Armitage wasn't charged with anything.
	So if you if there's no underlying crime, how do you get somebody for perjury lying about something that apparently was not a crime?
	Why didn't well that raises this another question?
	Why didn't Patrick Fitzgerald when he found out it was Armitage just say I'm calling it off?
	Not only that, he knew it was Armitage and he kept going after Libby.
	Yeah.
	This is this is why I forget about independent counsel.
	Thank thankfully, the independent council statute, when it started to be applied to Democrats, they they all of a sudden it was done away with.
	It was gone.
	And that was where you had literally a fourth branch of government without meaningful Oversight, investigating everything under the sun.
	And that, I think, frankly, it's a c it's a constitutional question.
	But now you still have something called a special counsel at the Justice Department.
	And the president did make a mistake when he allowed special counsel Fitzgerald to be appointed to investigate this.
	It never should have been investigated.
	There was nothing there except for a bunch of liberals of the CIA.
	Frustrating.
	Well, when the facts get out, though, I mean, it did come out, it did come out in our favor in the final analysis.
	The problem is a whole lot of damage was done to Scooter Libby.
	Where does he go to get his reputation back?
	Where does he go to pay his fines and all of this?
	Uh a federal judge just a couple of days ago, or last month, I should say, dismissed the lawsuit filed by Plame and her husband against Chania, other top officials.
	So the facts are on our side.
	The problem is they still, in many cases, have to go through the media filter, don't they?
	Jim, thanks for checking in.
	Appreciate it.
	Bob in Fort Miles Myers, Florida.
	You're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Hi.
	Hi there.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing wonderful.
	Okay.
	I must agree it is not Iraq.
	The problem is that George Bush really has governed almost as a liberal.
	If you look at what he does, he spends like a drunken sailor.
	We've never seen a veto.
	He turns around.
	No, he's vetoed one bill, I believe it was the stem cell research bill.
	Yeah, that's the only thing because he figured that's the only thing that his base wouldn't come back and the test on that is coming up next month, or this fall, I should say, when all the appropriations bills have come up and Bush has pledged to veto all of them.
	Yeah.
	He's got to do something because he's working on his legacy now.
	But immigration.
	Eighty percent of the people in the country don't want it the way they did it.
	And the reason is they don't trust him.
	I don't trust him.
	I thought I had elected a conservative.
	Did you vote for him twice?
	A liberal.
	Did you vote for him twice?
	Yes, I did.
	Look, I will not vote for him again.
	Let me put this in context.
	I got two words for you.
	President Gore.
	Now, if where would immigration be on that?
	Well, you'd have open borders.
	Where would the tax cuts be?
	You'd have a tax increase, no tax cut.
	Where would Alito and Roberts be?
	They'd still be on the appellate bench or someplace else.
	And there would be no prosecution in the war on terror.
	I I do not disagree with what you're saying.
	If it was two evils, I would vote for him again.
	If he was the only stinking choice.
	All right.
	But you look at the other guys that are running right now, other Thompson, and you start looking at him, and what do you have?
	They are closet liberals.
	Well, therein lies the problem, doesn't it?
	You know, this started all the way back in 1976 and Jerry Ford and and God bless the late Jerry Ford, but the fact is he was no conservative, and we were told to vote for him, and not much happened when the Gipper lost in Kansas City, and then it was Bush 41 and a lot of people, including me.
	I that was when I was running for Congress in 1990, and that's when the Great Budget Deal was struck.
	And we raised taxes in 1990.
	And and you're right, the the Republican faithful are a little hypersensitive right now into being conned once again.
	So they're looking for the real thing.
	They're looking for a Reaganite figure.
	Look, when it comes to spending, that's what's done in the Republicans.
	And it wasn't just George Bush.
	It was the Republicans in Congress.
	And when you had the Republican, I can remember all those years we would complain about the Republicans in Congress, and they'd say, Well, Jason, or they'd tell you, look, I got a Democrat president, not much I can do.
	Then we got a Republican president, and they started spending like Democrats, and unfortunately the administration went along, and that dis uh alienated, disaffected a whole lot of uh of conservatives, and no matter the dissembling now by some of the Republican Party uh regulars, they're still upset.
	And that explains why you're right, why Thompson is doing pretty well before he declares.
	Now he hasn't said anything yet.
	He hasn't come out on positions.
	So the truth will be the devil will be in the details, perhaps, but you're right.
	There is angst, and it is over, quite frankly, some GOP betrayal, and I gave you that famous quote by the Bush speechwriter over Reaganite conservative limited government principles.
	Got to move.
	Thanks for the call.
	I'm Jason Lewis, in for the great one, Rush Limbaugh on EIB.
	All right, coming up next hour, we've got some Katrina news.
	American Cancer Society is betraying their liberalism.
	That is in the news.
	Oh, yeah.
	And one thing about all these people supposedly foreclosing on their homes.
	I want to get into this too.
	It is not the mortgage broker's fault that you're foreclosing.

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