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Oct. 5, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:21
October 5, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Greetings my friends and welcome back.
The service of humanity is occurring here at the Rush Limbaugh program behind this Golden EIB microphone.
It is Friday and live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Kinduki, you know the drill here, folks.
Monday through Thursday, we talk about what I care about.
On Friday, when we go to phones, you can discuss whatever you want.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBnet.com.
And as evidenced by the previous hour, we always take more phone calls on Friday than we generally do Monday through Thursday.
There's an interesting story about Barack Obama out there.
He was in Waterloo, Iowa.
He says he doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin because it's become a substitute for true patriotism since the 9-11 attacks.
He was asked about it on Wednesday in an interview on a TV station, Cedar Rapids, said he stopped wearing the pin shortly after the attacks and instead hoped to show his patriotism by explaining his ideas to citizens.
The truth is that right after 9-11, I had a pin.
Shortly after 9-11, particularly because as we were talking about the Iraq War, it became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.
Now, you can go look up the definition of patriotism in any dictionary you want, and that is not it.
Well, these guys have to redefine patriotism.
Mrs. Clinton redefined patriotism once as being equal to criticizing a sitting president, dissent.
And Obama's getting pretty close to the same thing.
The interesting thing about this to me is now that we know that Elizabeth Edwards, PR people send out questions that she wants to be asked to people that are going to be interviewing her in various media, because the guy at Air America Radio admitted it.
He got a note from the PR person suggesting things that she wanted to be asked about.
So why in the world, how in the hell does this flag pin question come up?
Of all the things, that may be legit.
The question for the TV station could have been legitimate, but we also have to consider the possibility that the Obama campaign wants to be asked about this.
In any event, it was asked and it was answered.
There is obviously an attempt here by Barack Obama to suggest not wearing the flag is patriotic.
He's aiming it right at the fringe lunatic base.
He's got a lot of ground to make up on Mrs. Clinton, and he's got to do it with the base.
He's got to do it with those one in five Democrats in the Fox News poll that admit they think the world would be better off if the United States lost this war.
So that's who he's going at by letting it be known that he took off his American flag lapel pin as a sign of phony patriotism.
After 9-11 and a long time after within the first year after, I remember down here in Florida, you couldn't see a car that did not have a flag protruding from an open window or from the backs.
I went out to California, went to Los Angeles about the same time, a year after 9-11, and it was amazing to see that many cars on the freeways with the American flag waving proudly in one form or another.
And Obama now tells us he took his flag off after 9-11, his lapel pen.
Something about this doesn't, it doesn't make any sense to make this an issue.
Well, it makes total sense.
I'm sorry, it makes total sense.
When you understand exactly who it is that Barack Obama is trying to gain the support of.
Makes total sense, 100%.
Should have known.
Even when I think I'm wrong, I'm right.
Back to the audio soundbites.
I need to thank a couple more people.
This is yesterday morning on the House floor during one-minute speeches, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican, South Carolina.
In conclusion, God bless our troops, and we'll never forget September the 11th.
Thank goodness for Rush Limbaugh, who supports our troops.
And this is Representative Doug Lamborn, who is a Republican from Colorado.
Yesterday morning during his one-minute speech on the floor of the House.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to denounce the liberals' fraudulent attacks on Rush Limbaugh.
Anyone who reads the widely available transcript, as I have done, sees that Mr. Limbaugh was appropriately referring to the pretenders who pose as medal winners or who falsely claim to have committed atrocities in Iraq when he used the phrase phony soldiers.
No, the real scandal here is that liberals in America and here in this Congress are willing to manipulate facts to smear those they disagree with.
But there's an even more insidious agenda by liberals going on, and that is to reinstitute the so-called fairness doctrine, which is actually a way to silence conservatives on the radio waves.
Mr. Limbaugh deserves mega kudos for being a forceful and effective voice on the side of common sense and for being an example of the First Amendment in action.
After all, isn't that what our country is supposed to be about?
It is exactly what it's supposed to be about.
There are those attempting to get rid of that little problem of having to listen to opposing viewpoints that embarrass them because the opposing viewpoints happen to be right.
So thanks again to Joe Wilson, Republican, South Carolina, and Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado.
I appreciate both of you gentlemen rising to the House floor to combat this smear.
Staying on this for just a little longer.
You know the group Code Pink.
Code Pink, they show up, they wear pink, anti-war group, show up in congressional hearings.
They were at the Petraeus hearings and tried to disrupt, and they spout the same lies that the entire anti-war movement does.
They defaced the military recruitment office in Berkeley, California.
While the recruiters were inside, Captain Richard Lond, who has had to put up with his unhinged abuse, wrote an open letter to Berkeley.
And in it, he said, while the protest that you staged in front of my office on Wednesday, September 26th, was an exercise of your constitutional rights, the messages that you left behind were insulting, untrue, and ultimately misdirected.
Additionally, from the comments quoted in the Berkeley Daily Planet article, it's clear you have no idea what it is that I do here.
Given that I was unaware of your planned protest, I was unable to contest your claims in person, so I will therefore address them here.
And he goes on to contest their lies.
But Code Pink, and of course, we all know what happened to the Marines arriving back at the Oakland, California airport.
They were spit on.
This is the kind of behavior that the left is known for.
That is who they are.
Code Pink spitting on Marines coming back to Oakland.
That's who they are.
They have to try to deflect from it by throwing me in with people who do the same thing, which was ludicrous on his face, and they should have known.
By the way, the Orange County Register has come up with another phony soldier.
It took just one two-minute phone call for Gordon Dillow, who is a columnist of the Orange County Register, to determine that fugitive accused child molester Chester Stiles was never a Navy SEAL.
So why did so many news organizations give the impression that he was?
Well, the answer, in my opinion, is simple.
It's because some people are only too happy to portray American military men not as honorable warriors, but as losers and thugs and criminals.
As you may know, Stiles is the creep who is suspected of videotaping his rape of a three-year-old Las Vegas girl.
The appalling crime prompted nationwide news coverage in a nationwide manhunt for the 37-year-old career criminal.
Almost all the news reports described Stiles as a survivalist who claimed to be a former Navy SEAL, although at least one TV station said that he was, in fact, a former SEAL.
But Stiles never was a member of the Navy's elite, highly trained SEAL Special Operations Force, not even close.
According to Mike McClellan, spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Stiles joined the Navy in 1988.
He was trained as an engine man, was discharged as an E-1, the lowest pay grade in the military, in 1989.
McClellan couldn't release the nature of Stiles' discharge, but it's likely it was under less than honorable conditions.
In other words, not only was this guy not a Navy SEAL, he was not even a bona fide veteran.
And yet, he's a child rapist.
And the drive-by media reporting on this guy reports about him as though he's a Navy SEAL.
And Mr. Dillow here is exactly right.
Their purpose for doing this is to besmirch the men and women of the U.S. military by suggesting war turns them into child rapists and so forth.
And these stories are quite common.
That's who the American left is.
That's who it is that wants America to lose the war because they think America will be a better place.
Okay, so Code Pink is out defacing a military recruitment center in Berkeley.
We've got this guy, Chester Stiles, being portrayed as a Navy SEAL by the people in the drive-by media who want to disparage members of the U.S. military.
And I have this from Clarice Feldman at the American Think.
Sorry, American Thinker.
Mind is racing here today, folks.
Her headline here is, are members of Congress accountable for anything?
Are congressmen above the law?
The case of Staff Sergeant Frank Waterick against Congressman John Murtha tests this basic question.
Of course, there are other reasons to ask the same question.
In a year when congressional committees see no limits to what they will subpoena from the executive branch or about what they will interrogate its officers and employees, they rushed to court to keep the Department of Justice from subpoenaing the records of a congressman caught with tens of thousands of dollars in his freezer.
I mean, Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana.
Bad as shielding suspicious congressional cold cash from view may be, insulating congressmen when attacking ordinary citizens or worse yet, active duty soldiers is an invitation to tyranny.
We are all potential targets if this holds true.
Are they totally unaccountable for their conduct against ordinary citizens?
I certainly hope not, but if that ultimately proves to be the case in court, I hope we have the strength to demand a change in the law.
Wooderick is the man who is suing Jack Murtha for defamation.
And all of these comments, you are a murderer, he is a killer, and so forth.
And of course, the argument is, hey, I'm a Congressman.
I say what I want.
You can't sue me.
Except Merthyr made these statements in a press conference, not on the floor of the House.
And a judge has said that Merthyr has to testify, which will be tested.
Now, Wooderick offered Murtha an opportunity to resolve the whole dispute with a simple retraction.
Congressman John Klein acknowledged that similar statements made by him were premature and inappropriate, same statements made by Mertha, and issued a public apology to Mr. Wooderick, Frank Wooderick.
Murtha has refused to do so and is the subject, therefore, of this suit.
So she goes on to ask this question.
If congressmen are protected by statutory immunity from accountability after making facially libelous statements based on no solid evidence against the troops in time of war, something is wrong with the law.
And she is exactly right.
Where does this stuff stop?
They can say anything they want about anybody on the floor of the House.
They can libel.
They can slander.
They can do anything.
And nobody has any recourse.
And if they get away with it, it is only going to continue because they'll see it, they think, as being effective.
All right, Matt, in Holdbridge, Nebraska.
We go back to you next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
How you doing?
Good.
Thank you, sir.
Great to talk to you.
Dittos, by the way.
Thank you.
I just had a comment about the Mrs. Edwards clip you played last hour about how if you didn't serve in the military, you should not be allowed to criticize them.
Wait, that's not what she said that my draft affirmant was fake.
Well, it was before that, she said...
Yeah, but she...
I mean, that's...
You're right.
She said...
She said that, but she also said the draft affirmative was fake.
And then she said that people who don't serve in the military shouldn't be able to criticize it.
Right.
And she's not the only one that I've heard say that.
I've heard you play clips from other people that have said that too.
And heard it in the news.
And by that token, she and about half of the Congress should be able to shut up, shouldn't they?
Well, see, she has a caveat of this.
She's buying into this smear.
She says people who didn't serve shouldn't have the right, shouldn't be able to criticize those who did.
But she hasn't served either.
No, nor has her husband.
But see, this is a convenient liberal trick.
And this is, I've faced this.
I mean, I think back at the first time I ran into this was early in this program, since 1988 or 89, I forget which.
Big battle over the defense budget I'm talking about.
I get some call from a wacko liberal.
You didn't serve.
You can't talk about it.
What do you know about the military?
You weren't there.
You had a chance to volunteer to kill commies, and you didn't go.
So what gives you the right to talk about the military?
But this is just more censorship.
It's just an attempt to get people to be silenced, political correctness or what have you.
Censorship.
Well, censorship only comes from the government, but it's intimidation.
It's all based on the fact these people don't want to hear the truth.
They don't want to hear anything.
It upsets their little perverted view of the way the world is.
Thanks for the call out there, Matt.
Appreciate it.
This is Eden in Philadelphia.
Nice to have you with us on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Oh, hey, Rush.
All right, I have this problem, okay?
It's with some famous people who are supposed to be representing us.
I think are hurting our cause.
A few days ago, I was listening to the Dom Giordano show in Philadelphia, and he said he denied Ann Coulter an interview for her new book because he's tired of all her negativity.
And I think he was doing right.
He was right for doing so.
When I heard that, I called up his show to tell him that I agree.
And I also named Sean Handy as part of the problem.
He didn't agree with me on that.
But my point for saying that Is because unlike you and O'Reilly and some others, he doesn't waste time when teaching liberals or expressing his views well.
And I think Ann Coulter is almost the same way.
And like, what I mean by that is, like, these like, all right, these people, they might be hurting our cause.
Like, when are we going to stop, you know, like, when are we going to start teaching the uninformed?
So you think battling the liberals all the time.
The bottom line, you think Ann Coulter.
Yeah, like her new all right.
All right, for example, like a book like David Limaugh's Bankrupt makes sense.
It isn't as provocative with the title and only speaks on elected Democratic officials, but Ann Coulter's title, like if Democrats had brains, they'd be Republican.
It's kind of maybe offensive to other Democrats who are simply just uninformed about the corruption in their political party.
Okay.
Your basic premise here is that Ann's books and his most recent title might be hurting our cause.
Yeah.
Stuff like that.
Like, why is another Ann Coulter book?
How is that going to help us?
Do you have any evidence of that?
No, no, I mean, like, all right, the person who denied her, the one who denied her the interview, he's saying that, like, the provocativeness of her, like, the way she's negative party.
Is this guy that denied her the interview?
Is he one of us, Eden?
Yeah, he's one of us.
Yeah, he's on the big talk here.
Well, look, anybody's entitled to their opinion.
If he thinks that it's going to be harmful to the movement to have her on, he can think that.
I happen to disagree with that.
I think Anne is brilliant.
I think she's funny.
I think so, too.
I just think funny as hell.
And she gets under their skin.
I mean, you could argue that the smear against me this week has hurt our cause.
Would you argue that?
It has, I think.
It has not, you know.
No, I think it has.
You think it has?
Yeah.
So I should stop being smeared.
No, no, no.
I think, I mean, I think I was wrong.
How do I stop being smeared is the point.
I mean, I was sitting here minding my own business, eating the liberals up, chewing them up, spitting them out, and they got mad.
And they launched a smear.
Now, you think it's hurting our cause.
I frankly think it's just the opposite in this case.
Well, yeah, it is.
And I think, you know, Ann does a lot of things.
She goes into the teeth of the dog out there, Eden.
She goes where she's hated.
She goes to college Kampi.
She takes the questions.
She does these things.
She confronts these people.
She's showing a lot of courage.
She's demonstrating a lot of courage and a lot of leadership.
She's standing up for what she believes.
Now, if some people are embarrassed or if they've made to feel uncomfortable by it, that's one thing.
But I'll tell you what, I don't hear people calling here.
I don't hear the left being concerned about all the movies and books they've done on the assassination of George W. Bush.
I don't hear the liberals worried about whether Michael Moore is hurting them or not.
People could be a little bit too sensitive about this.
And I don't know if the guy you're talking about even knows Anne, but he probably would have enjoyed talking to her had he had her on.
Thanks for the call.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
Thanks.
I got still people throwing stuff at me left and right.
Something about I'm looking for it now because I already got it in a stack.
It's about Hillary and what Bill's going to do when he's first man, first lady.
It's not in this.
Maybe it's in the other stack here.
Something about he's going to restore our image.
And there's a thought that I wanted to convey about that, but I slipped my mind.
There's too much happening here all at once.
Here's Michael in Salisbury, Maryland.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Well, hello, Rush.
Greetings from the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Thank you, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
I appreciate you having me.
I had a question for you, and I was told this is a great Open Line Friday question.
We'll see.
Back in the day when you started out, I remember reading your first book, and you said you read several newspapers a day.
Well, nowadays, we get the internet.
What are the blog sites that you prefer to read?
I know you talk about American Thinker a lot, and one reason I'm asking about this is I do one myself, and I want to know what I should pattern my blog site on.
You know, I'm going to take you through a little history because this actually turns out to be a pretty good question.
Thank you.
When I started, the iteration, the first iteration of this program was in Sacramento in 1984.
Right.
And back then it was just newspapers, and I would prep three hours in Sacramento with three papers.
Well, maybe four, if you throw in USA Today, it's local Sacramento paper, two Sacramento papers at the time, the San Francisco Chronicle, sometimes Wall Street Journal, maybe it was four or five.
Moved to New York.
And by the way, I got my first computer when I was at Apple IIc.
And that's where I first started logging on to CompuServe and the various news sources there.
So all of a sudden, the universe began to expand.
Right.
I was on the cutting edge of this.
Of course.
Well, no, of utilizing these, you know, the internet, but it was back, like, what, 256 borders.
It was these slow, slow things.
It was magically fast back then, but it was snail's paced by today's standards.
Then moved to New York, and of course that all changed with all the papers there, the Washington Post, and the internet was expanding in terms of services available.
It quickly became clear that once, you know, after about 1990, I couldn't do it all on my own, even doing it 24-7.
There was just too much available, too much to find.
So people who were with me then, who are still with me now, I said, look, I want you to go here and find.
I want you to go there and find.
And they know what I'm doing.
I outsourced your media.
Well, I outsourced it to staff, not to India.
That's good.
Okay.
Outsourced it to staff who know me, who know what I'm saying.
So they don't send me stuff that's worthless.
They know I'm going to be interested in it or not.
And what happens is, starting this afternoon and through the weekend and up till Monday morning, my printers at home and here will be going nuts.
Stuff I'm finding and printing.
And after I print it, I forget it.
I don't look at it.
Let's pretend tomorrow's a workday.
I'll leave here.
I'll get home.
The printer here will go nuts.
At home, it'll go nuts.
People are looking for things around the clock.
I stagger it.
Well, not overnight, but I've got three people that work diligently on this.
And every morning I get in here, you know, seven, eight o'clock, and start doing the intense prep of the latest news for that particular day, coupled with what all has been found and printed to me by myself and these other three people over the course of the night.
And it just keeps building and building and building.
And about 11 o'clock, I stop, I take that huge stack out of the printer, and that's when I start going through and putting together what I'm going to do.
Now, I'm the one that looks at the blogs.
Some of the others, we'll step into them for a link or something like that.
But if I start naming the blogs, I mean, I'd be glad to, but I'm going to leave some out, and I will end up being offensive.
I'll hurt some people's feelings.
It's sort of like when you talk about cigars, you don't want to leave anybody out.
I can see that.
Yes.
But I look at the blogs that there's some really bright people out there in these blogs.
There's some really brilliant people who do.
They find the same stories I do.
Everybody does now.
That's not the big deal.
But some of these people have some really unique insights into them.
Some of them have sometimes they find stuff that I haven't found.
They play the angles.
Now, when I do my website, I do the same thing.
So I could see that.
What do you mean, play the angles?
They play different angles as in they look at different pieces of the story, something that you can do.
The obvious part is obvious, but then there's something that, hey, you know, this reminds me of something else that I saw.
True.
But not even, even looking at the obvious, sometimes I disagree with them, but that spawns additional thoughts that I have.
I mean, these are all conservative bloggers.
I do not waste, other than for entertainment, I do not waste my time with liberal blogs.
I don't believe them.
I mean, why would you want to surround yourself with insane people?
Even if they are on your computer, why would you want to do this?
I don't.
I don't need.
I know those people.
I know what they're going to say about things.
That's what the staff is for.
I tell a staff, you hang around and you look at the insane websites out there, and they get duty pay for this, hazard duty.
But on the conservative side, there's never unanimity of thought.
And I disagree with them sometimes, and that helps me even further cement an argument that I want to make.
But there's so much out there now.
It becomes, if I weren't disciplined, if our staff here weren't disciplined, we could go into overload every day.
Oh, I believe.
As it is, I mean, I've got three stacks here today, and by the time, and this is Openline Friday, it's a little different, but I'll get 30% of it done, maybe 40%.
And also, all the stuff I don't use today, I'll put aside for tomorrow in case tomorrow's light.
But tomorrow's never light.
That's right.
Every day we're overloaded.
You know, fortunately, my staff.
In a good way.
Pardon me?
Too much information, but in a good way.
Well, there's always going to be too much information.
The key is being able to synthesize it, break it down to its essence, take the complex, make it understandable.
For example, here's another trick.
If I got a story from like a newspaper, any website that prints out in three pages, I only print the first page because the other two pages is a bunch of BS that come from the Nexus database that have nothing to do with the story.
I don't need any more pieces of paper on my desk than I have here.
So I only print one page of it.
And I'm very lucky.
Only one of these three people keeps track of what stuff they send me that I use and give me grief if I'm not using enough of it.
The others are pretty good at keeping their ego out of it.
But this one guy keeps a record.
And if I don't use this, he'll send it back two or three times.
Take the time's right for this now, he'll say.
Oh, yeah.
And I say, look, it didn't work the first time.
Get the message.
But it takes a large effort.
This show is huge.
We have a massive responsibility to the audience to meet and surpass audience expectations.
And it's just not possible for me to do it all every day.
And the blogs have become a big part of it.
But I don't know what you're talking about with your blog.
I assume you're a conservative.
Yes.
Yeah.
Is your blog up and running?
It better be.
What's the name of your blog?
It's monoblog.
It's www.monoblog.us, and you may fry my server if you wish.
Well, that probably will happen.
I'll be curious to see that.
It's M-O-N-O-B-L-O-G.
It's a monologue with the B.
And you're the inspiration for the name because I'm monologue every hour.
I just threw a B in the middle of it.
One monologue.
I do monologues constantly.
I'll do a monologue after a phone call.
I am a monologuist.
Yes, and so.
That's why I have to run it.
It was the inspiration for the name, and I just put a B in the middle of it.
Well, then if I inspired the name of your blog, you deserve a little hit here.
So it's www.monoblog.com.us.
I'm an American.
It's .us.
Okay, monoblog.what?
US.
Not com, just U.S. You got it.
Monologue.
Monoblog.
Monoblog.us.
Yes, sir.
Okay, you, if not this instant in Mere Moments, are officially fried on your server.
Thanks for the call.
Be right back after this.
Hi, we're back, Rush Limbaugh with talent on loan from a God.
You know, one more thing about, this is one more thing about the show prep here and how it happens.
I never became an employer until I started this show.
I was always an employee.
And as an employee, I mean, we all, whenever we do great work, we all want it to be acknowledged and we want to be accredited and we want it to be noticed by higher ups and so forth.
And we all think that doesn't happen enough.
So you always try to take the lessons you learned as an employee, if you ever become an employer and employ those lessons as well as the people in order to maintain motivation, inspiration, and this sort of thing.
So, and I do this, but sometimes it gets funny and it is a little challenge.
And this is where you have to stand back.
I have to stand up as the employer as the big guy and just sort of let it bounce off and resist the temptation to respond as I would like to.
Sometimes one of these three researchers going on vacation will make a big, are you sure that you can do this without me?
Are you sure you can do that?
And the temptation is to say, are you kidding?
I did this long before you.
But I said, look, we'll handle it.
Your vacation's up.
It's due.
Go have a good time and don't worry about anything.
But yet it doesn't matter, even while on vacation, they send stuff in, because everybody loves the program that works on it.
Everybody is just devoted to it.
And that's largely because of me as boss.
And everybody wants to be part of a winner.
And it's fun being part of a winner.
And it's being, especially the past nine days, we've just been having the time of our lives here.
I got a little angry.
Dawn got a little angry at me today for granting an interview to the Palm Beach Post.
Thought I'd lost my mind because they had a history of being pretty tough on me and in her mind, unfair.
And so it's interesting.
I make a decision going to do this.
And I didn't tell them about it till today, did the interview two days ago.
And even though Dawn has known how you've been here five years, six years.
Dawn's been here six years since right at the time I started losing my hearing.
She knows me.
She has, but all of a sudden, one day, I can lose my mind in her mind.
She can think I've gone nuts.
It's cute.
And it's all based on the fact they care so much.
They don't want me messing up.
It's not a personal criticism.
I didn't take it as a personal criticism.
Well, maybe for the first five minutes.
But then after that, as boss, I realized what was actually behind it was a deep affection and hoping, oh, gosh, I hope this doesn't backfire.
Does he know what he's doing?
And if truth be told, Snerdley was still fuming about it even after he read the interview.
Not because of the interview, because he thought I'd taken a great unnecessary career risk.
Once I explained to Strategery, things they hadn't even considered because they didn't know made all kinds of sense.
And now they're back into fold.
They're back on my side.
You hear that?
Somebody's printing me something now, even.
Show prep coming in, even while the program unfolds before your very eyes.
And I'm not going to go look at it right now.
I will during the next break.
Here's Alan in Manhattan.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Howdy.
Howdy.
I've been listening since 1990.
This is my second time getting through.
I love this.
Before 1990, I was a long-haired hippie liberal, and I voted Republican for the first time in 2000 and haven't looked back.
But I'm very disappointed in George Bush pertaining to Campion and Ramos.
And I feel betrayed.
I feel angry every day about these guys.
And I'd like to know what your explanation is, because you're always a big defender of George Bush, saying that I believe he does what he does because he thinks it's best for the country.
I don't see any way that keeping these poor suckers locked up is good for the country.
First place, I appreciate your kind words.
Number two, when it comes to the immigration issue, I have never been on board with the White House on this, and it has provided some moments of friction.
But I have not been on board, and I don't understand this border guard thing.
I think, especially why they're still in jail.
You know, I've talked to some U.S. attorneys about this case who agree with you and me on the whole immigration thing.
Now, the U.S. attorney community is a close-knit bunch, and they're tight with law enforcement in the federal government.
We're talking here about border guards and so forth.
But in this case, we're talking about a U.S. attorney or two that I know, because I asked him, what is this about?
I mean, what's in the media, and it's out there on all these blogs.
It's too much to cipher.
Tell me the legalities of this, I said.
And now, I'll tell you what he said, but you have to understand U.S. attorneys hang together.
It was a U.S. attorney that tried this case.
But isn't that just a form of having your hands dirty?
Hanging together regardless?
No, no, I haven't explained it to you yet.
Okay.
Go ahead.
I don't remember the details, but he told me that the U.S. attorney that tried this case was right.
He had the evidence on his side.
The law was the law.
The law was broken in this case, and the U.S. attorney had no choice.
Now, I have to take what he says.
He's a friend of mine.
He doesn't lie to me.
Sometimes I think he's wrong on things, but not very often.
I have to take that, and I have to, okay, I'm not an attorney, and I don't know this law like he does.
And I specifically asked him to look at it.
So in a situation like this, I have to take the emotion out of this.
You know, it'd be easy to say those guys went to jail and were tried in the midst of the immigration debate because Republicans wanted to show the Hispanic community that we can be tough.
Because everybody thought that during the immigration debate, both parties were making a play for the Hispanic vote.
And so you'd be easy for me to emotionally say, well, obviously these guys are a couple of pawns so that the Hispanic community can see that the Republicans, too, are going to get tough.
But I have to throw that out because as this has been explained to me, the case was properly tried and it was properly charged.
I'm still not complaining.
I'm not explanation, but Rush, I have heard people as luminary as Duncan Hunter and Mike Huckabee both say that this drug dealer they shot was given immunity.
And while the trial was going on, he continued to run drugs, but that wasn't told to the jury.
Look, I'm as conflicted by it as you are.
My bottom line is, I don't have an explanation for you, but you're not going to get me to defend the president on this.
I'm with you.
Some of this stuff is repugnant.
I think what happened to Scooter Libby is repugnant.
I mean, but George Bush has it within his purview to do something about this.
And I've always thought of him as a fair-minded man.
And, you know, and even if he's not going to be able to do that.
Well, they weren't going to be able to do that.
If he's going to do something about it, Alan, the timing for it will be during the normal at the end of the year or at the end of his term when it comes time for the usual presidential pardons.
These kinds of things in the middle, the scooter-libby thing was really, really rare because of the timing.
But all he did was commute the sentence.
He didn't get rid of the conviction.
May do that later in a part.
I got to run because of time.
I hope that helps.
It's Open Line Friday, folks.
Fastest three hours in media, about up today.
We have one more exciting hour to go, and we'll get to it shortly.
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