Rush Limbaugh Program - October 11, 2007, Thursday, Hour #1

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Oct. 11, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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October 11, 2007, Thursday, Hour #1

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	Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
	Well, now, let me get this straight.
	Let me get this straight, everybody.
	Former President Jimmy Carter says the U.S. tortures prisoners in violation of international law, adding that President Bush makes up his own definition of torture.
	Let me get this straight.
	Jimmy Carter, the U.S. tortures at will.
	Now, this sounds a little odd, but come to think of it, who would know more about torture than Jimmy Carter?
	He tortured the American people for four years.
	Hi, everybody.
	Welcome once again to the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Rush is the, is, I guess, in the Rush to Excellence program mode today up in Philly, as you all know by now.
	I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright.
	Glad to be back in the Attila the Hunt chair behind the golden EIB mic.
	I come from the land of 10,000 loons, as you know, the great state of Minnesota, home of Walter Mondale, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken, otherwise up here known as Mo, Larry, and Curly.
	How the heck are you?
	It is a lovely Thursday where we are, and I'm certain it's the same where you are.
	Lots of things to talk about.
	This whole Jimmy Carter thing and torture, you know, it sounds so touchy-feely.
	It sounds as though we're above all of the rest of the international community.
	Excuse me, aren't they the ones that behead people on videos?
	And we're worried about Abu Ghraib.
	We're worried about humiliating people.
	Now, there are two tacts on this.
	One is philosophical, and one, of course, is legal.
	Let's start with the legal first, and let's disabuse ourselves of this notion, everyone, once and for all, that these people have, quote-unquote, due process rights.
	They do not have due process rights.
	They are unlawful enemy combatants.
	They are not wearing the insignia or a military uniform, therefore not protected by the Geneva Convention.
	They're certainly not civilian defendants as though they robbed a convenience store last week in Brooklyn or something.
	They are unlawful enemy combatants.
	They target civilians.
	They don't acknowledge their war.
	They're terrorists.
	They don't wear the uniform.
	They're not protected by international accord.
	And they're certainly not American citizens or civilian defendants entitled to the full breadth of the 5th or 14th Amendment and due process.
	So legally, quite, let's be honest about this.
	On the battlefield, before we bomb them to smithereens, we don't read them the Miranda rights.
	You know, maybe we better, before we capture this guy, could we get a lawyer, taxpayer-funded, of course, and read him his rights?
	We blow them up.
	Now, someone explained to me once and for all how we can blow people up on the battlefield, shoot them, kill them, and yet if we capture them, according to the International Red Cross, we can only get their name, rank, and serial number, which might be a problem for al-Qaeda.
	They don't have ranks and serial numbers.
	They are unlawful enemy combatants.
	So legally, friends, this is quite honestly a slam-dunk case, and each ensuing decision by the Supreme Court is leaning in that direction, notwithstanding a couple of setbacks earlier.
	In fact, if you go all the way back to 1942, when eight Germans landed on our shores bent on sabotage, they were caught before they could carry out their mission.
	Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a presidential proclamation, they were hauled before a secret military tribunal, found guilty, and six of the eight were put to death.
	They had no taxpayer-funded court-appointed attorney.
	They had no Miranda right.
	They had no Geneva Convention Accord.
	You know where this started?
	George Washington, when he captured the accomplice of Benedict Arnold, he hanged him.
	Now, there was no civilian trial.
	It was a rush to judgment military tribunal.
	So legally, let's just cut this out, former President Carter.
	Legally, the precedent is there going all the way back to the founding of the Republic.
	Now, philosophically, that might be another question.
	Do we or do we not engage in torture?
	Well, do we or do we not rough up a prisoner if we know or we have reason to suspect that they know where, oh, I don't know, a nuclear device might be planted in the city of Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Miami, Houston?
	Is it worth roughing up a prisoner to save five, six, seven, 10 million lives?
	This is not an easy question, but it is certainly not beyond the pale to say, yeah, I think it might be worth to get a little rough with these guys, and we'll apologize later, in order to save 10 million Americans.
	You see, I have this antiquated notion.
	I have this odd sentiment that when it comes to, well, my worldview, I think the president's worldview, I think conservative worldview, you ready for this?
	Are you sitting down?
	You're hoping not driving if you're a liberal.
	Americans come first.
	America, the last best hope of freedom on earth, must survive in order to freedom to expand if that's your goal.
	My goal is preserving the country.
	The president's goal is preserving the country.
	The executive branch's goal, the commander-in-chief's goal is to preserve the country.
	That comes before what the ACLU and their International Red Cross might say about Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or anything else.
	Now, I think reasonable people can disagree.
	Some people say you should never ever torture.
	But I'm just telling you, when it comes to this obsession, and this becomes so obtuse after a while, with international law.
	I remember when Reagan was violating international accords in Central America.
	I'm glad he did.
	We won.
	They lost.
	That's a good thing.
	1-800-282-2882, the contact line remains the same for the Rush Limbaugh program.
	I.M. Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright in for El Rushboat today as he's up in Philly at a Rush to Excellence tour.
	Got to talk about the S-CHIP program.
	I have got to tell, I just, this is one of those things that is a microcosm for the future, or actually a microcosm of Hillary care, but really a harbinger of things to come with regard to the future of the Republican Party.
	Now, let's be clear about this.
	Moveon.org is starting to target members of Congress who voted against the $35 billion expansion of the S-CHIP program, the misnomer, the state children's health insurance program that covers able-bodied adults, pregnant women, and illegal immigrants.
	They're going after members of Congress to get them to override the president's veto on, I believe, October 18th.
	They're gearing up in campaign mode.
	Unfortunately, they've got some rhinos on their side, Republicans in name only.
	Messrs O. Senator Grassley, Orrin Hatch ought to be, quite frankly, ashamed of themselves on this.
	Friends, this is the first test case of Hillary care.
	When you're covering people, able-bodied adults, two or three times the poverty level, in New Jersey, they're sticking with 350% of the poverty level.
	In New York, as everybody knows by now, the initial plan was to cover people making $82,000 a year.
	That's been scaled back somewhat, but many states, Minnesota, New Jersey, and others are saying, no, we reserve it upon ourselves to use the S-CHIP grant.
	We ought to leave out the C, I think, the S-CHIP grant to cover able-bodied adults, parents, pregnant women, illegal immigrants, making two, three times the federal poverty line.
	The CBO reports that for every two people that sign up on the Clinton S-CHIP program, remember this was brought to us by the Clintons in 97, for every two people that sign up, one leaves private insurance.
	Now, if you can't stand up to this clear expansion of government-run health care, government-run insurance, if you can't stand up to it now, the first installment of Hillary Care, I ask those wavering Republicans, those wilting Republicans, how on earth are you going to stand up to her as time goes on?
	Heaven forbid.
	This is Hillary Care.
	This is not, I mean, it's an absolute canard that this is health insurance for low-income children.
	14 states now use their S-CHIP grant to cover adults.
	I'll give you an example.
	In Minnesota, this shouldn't surprise you.
	We already have a program above and beyond the Medicaid-funded program to cover the indigent.
	So we already have a program called MinCare, which is an outrageous plan that taxes the providers, and then we wonder why it costs so much.
	And you can, believe it or not, you can make up to $100,000 as long as you have enough kids and get coverage under MinCare here in Minnesota.
	And so we didn't know what to do with this bonus, S-CHIP money.
	Gosh, what are we going to do?
	We already have a program trying to round people up, middle-class adults, into a government-run system called MinCare.
	What are we going to do?
	Oh, I know.
	We used it to cover the parents of children.
	About 92% of the S-CHIP grant in Minnesota, and as I say, 13 other states, goes for adults who are not low-income.
	So remember this, when the moveon.org ads start, when the Democrats start talking about this, and sadly, if you wayward Republicans, you bet you're sweet bippy, Mr. Hatch, when they start talking about this, they're prevaricating.
	This is not about low-income children.
	It's about middle-class adults.
	Now, if we can't say no to this, you know, you can call yourself a Republican, but you can't call yourself a conservative.
	If you can't say no to this, you will not say no to Hillary care.
	And that's the fundamental point in this whole S-CHIP debate.
	Why do you think they postponed it until October 18th?
	Because they're going to round up the moveon.org gang and they're going to run a campaign and try to get these people to flip.
	They've already flipped in the Senate where you've got a bunch of moderate Republicans that side with the Democrats.
	There's enough to override the president there.
	The last hope is the House Republicans, many of whom are standing firm.
	God bless them.
	But this is a microcosm of Hillary care.
	Frankly, it is Hillary care.
	And I will just tell you, if you can't write this ship of state, you'll never be able to stand up to Hillary Care.
	What is it going to take for people to realize that once the government offers something for free, and it doesn't matter what it is, but in this case it's health care, of course, or they subsidize it, there will be unlimited demand.
	If tomorrow at your favorite restaurant, they were giving away free meals and a bottle of wine to boot to kick things off, do you think there'd be a line at the restaurant?
	Of course there would be.
	The same is true for health care.
	When you have a third-party payer system and government is the ultimate third-party payer now paying for over half of our health care expenditures, there is unlimited demand.
	So what is the answer when there's unlimited demand?
	The answer is rationing.
	Now, it's true in the market system, there's price rationing.
	We have to make decisions.
	Do we want another test?
	Do we go to this doctor for our son's football physical or not?
	But when the government gets a hold of this and they're already doing it by cutting the reimbursement rates to doctors and providers, there will be such a demand, and this is what's happened in Canada.
	It's why you have waiting lines.
	In UK, that's why you have a waiting list.
	There will be such an unlimited demand.
	The only solution, the only global solution will be we're going to have to start rationing.
	As they are in England when they tell smokers, oh, by the way, if you don't quit smoking tomorrow, we're going to deny you advanced treatment.
	John Edwards talked about his plan would require preventative care.
	What's he going to do?
	Have the jogging police out there every morning make certain we jog?
	This is not the way to a healthy future.
	This is the way to the first installment of Hillary care.
	And shame, shame on those Republicans who are not standing firm with a president who is leading big time on this issue.
	I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
	Your call's coming right up after this short break.
	We are back on EIB, the Rush Limbaugh program.
	I'm Jason Lewis filling in for the great one today while he's doing his Rush to Excellence tour up in Philly.
	You know, they've been targeting Rush and talk radio for quite some time.
	And, you know, my just going after these wayward Republicans probably isn't going to help things a little bit because when you get both parties after you look out.
	And, well, this is exactly what certainly the Democrats want.
	As we know, Representative Henry Waxman, there's been talk about the House Oversight and Government Affairs Panel targeting talk radio, monitoring transcripts, and that sort of thing.
	Story was broken by the American Spectator.
	Joining us now is R. Emmett Tyrell, editor-in-chief, founder of the American Spectator, and of course, author, his latest book, The Clinton Crack Up: The Life of the President After He Leaves the White House, the boy president, that is, according to R. Emmett Tyrell, joining us now.
	Hello, sir.
	How are you?
	Good to be with you, Jason.
	Great to be with you.
	All right, what's the latest on this?
	Because we're getting all of these stories that the House Oversight and Government Affairs under Henry Waxman was going to look into a couple of talk show hosts, including El Rushbo, and use the strong arm of the government to reinstate the fairness doctrine with such ammunition.
	You broke this story.
	Now they're denying it.
	What's the latest?
	Well, the latest is that we broke the story at first when we broke the story Monday, and you can find it on our website, www.spectator.org.
	The first day that we broke the story, he said he'd been misrepresented about all the staffers he'd called in to talk about investigating us.
	Now, then he said a day later, he said that our story was completely false, and he demanded an apology and began to harass us.
	I've announced that I will apologize for a perfectly accurate story if he does the decent thing.
	And for him, that would be to go out and purchase a hairpiece, a toupee.
	I'll help him with a toupee.
	He'd look good as a blonde.
	Don't sugarcoat it, R. Emmett.
	Give it to him straight.
	You know, well, they're saying now that they want you to retract the story.
	Right.
	Well, we aren't going to retract the story.
	And he also put our telephone number up on his website, encouraging his constituents to call us.
	Well, he certainly knew, and you know, what his constituents are like.
	That meant we've got one crank call after another, but we don't respond to crank calls.
	And we're, well, if anything, we're going to dig in more deeply because he's got over something like 50 investigators up there on his staff, capable of looking into everything.
	They've gone after Karl Rove, they've gone after Condi Rice.
	They've even gone after these patriotic blackwater people who have defended our diplomats abroad.
	He's really kind of out of control.
	He's out of control.
	And to go after El Rushbo, that goes too far.
	Yeah, I mean, the Democrats are really getting down to work here trying to monitor talk radio.
	We used to call that the First Amendment, having resolutions trying to condemn Rush.
	I mean, this is just, of course, of course, silliness, but it is a planned event.
	I mean, this is the permanent campaign mode that you know so much about in covering the Clintons.
	I kind of like to call it Saul Lelinsky on crack.
	I mean, these people are with moveon.org and a whole lot of money are in permanent campaign mode designed to intimidate and harass anyone who disagrees with them.
	Well, you know, Rush and I discussed this in the Limbaugh letter when he interviewed me a couple of months back.
	This comes right out of the 1960s generation.
	In the Clinton crack, I talk about this intolerance comes right out of the 1960s.
	You mentioned Alinsky.
	There's Herbert Marcuse.
	There were other people that were gurus to the Clintons and to the rest of these people whose voices are now again being heard and calling on.
	I mean, Hillary was in the Washington Post just yesterday saying she was going to do something about it.
	Well, what is it?
	It's the intolerance of these people, and they're not going to do anything about it.
	I didn't think that over the last 20 years that I'd see the First Amendment being trashed by liberal Democrats.
	I thought they were on the side of freedom of speech.
	When they go after Sean Hannity, as we say in our piece, and Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh and send these same people they've sent out to harass Blackwater to harass our spokesman on radio, these wonderful broadcasters who have brought a new art to broadcasting, this art of talk radio.
	When they're going to go out and harass these people, we should expect the First Amendment to be in very grave danger over the next couple of years.
	And this is contrived.
	I mean, the same with the phony soldier nonsense, you know, propagated by such heroic veterans as Tom Harkin, who's been caught in a lie, the senator from Iowa, about his Vietnam record.
	And maybe subconsciously, Rush was talking about him.
	Of course, he wasn't deliberately.
	He was talking about the real phony soldiers.
	But that was contrived.
	This is all contrived because they had their back against the wall with the moveon.org ad being criticized by the entire country for going after Petraeus.
	So they had to fight back in order to intimidate.
	And apparently, the First Amendment, in the minds of these people, is only good for the New York Times and the Washington Post and the L.A. Times.
	Well, as I say, I never would have expected this, except for the fact that it comes out.
	These are all 1960s protégés.
	They come out of the 1960s.
	They were intolerant.
	They demonstrated against civil liberties in those days.
	And that's the same people today.
	They haven't learned.
	And I'll tell you that the American spectator is going to stand by its guns.
	And we're unlike them.
	We're going to be accurate.
	We're not going to drum up funny stories about soldiers.
	Look at the New Republic.
	One of the phony soldiers, and I think Rush talked about it last week.
	One of the phony soldiers was the Baghdad diarist writing in the New Republic, claiming he'd seen atrocities that he'd never seen.
	Now, that quietly was allowed to sink.
	But the truth of the matter is it's the liberal Democrats that imperil not only freedom, but imperil the rules of evidence because they're the ones that fake stories.
	You've not seen Rush Limbaugh fake stories.
	We've got to move on, R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor-in-chief, the American Spectator.
	You're not going to retract the story.
	You know, maybe it is time before I let you go to have the Supreme Court once and for all reverse red lion broadcasting versus the FCC.
	I don't think the court today, if the Fairness Doctrine were even reinstated, would uphold such a blatant attack on the First Amendment, and maybe we could just be done with it once and for all.
	Well, I would hope so, but you know, as the founding fathers made clear to us, freedom is forever delicate and forever being imperiled.
	And it's up to Rush and to you to stand by freedom, stand by the Bill of Rights.
	R. Emmett Tyrell, thanks so much.
	Editor-in-Chief of the American Spectator, your call's next.
	Talents on loan from Rush.
	That's me, Jason Lewis, today.
	Minnesota's Mr. Wright filling in for El Rushbo, doing for Minnesota what Rush has done for the country.
	1-800-282-2882.
	The contact line is always here at Excellence in Broadcasting.
	Let's go to Philip and Fort Worth.
	Your first up today on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
	Hi, Philip.
	Hello.
	How are you, sir?
	I'm doing just fun.
	How are you doing today?
	I got a couple of questions I want to ask you, okay?
	Certainly.
	Okay, you know, the last two wars we fought in America, there was Bush Wars, right?
	Both Bush was in office, right?
	I'll ask you a question.
	Do you think America would have been better off if no Bush hadn't been a president?
	And another question.
	Is it true Marvin Bush worked security at the Twin Towns before 9-11?
	And another one thing.
	Is it true Julia Anna declared after the World Trade Center failed, he declared unsafe after they got the last gold bar out of the World Trade Center?
	And where is our goal that was at the world at the World Trade Center?
	Folks, living proof we've yet to win the war on drugs.
	You know, it's hard to know where to start.
	Let's start with the rather sane question here.
	I think one out of four ain't bad, Philip.
	I'm not going to get into the Michael Moore conspiracy theories.
	They've all been totally refuted by every objective source.
	It's just silliness.
	And you talk, you know, it's funny.
	You talk about hurting the American institution, breeding distrust in the government.
	Liberals always say conservatives hate government.
	Nobody has done more to invoke distrust in government than Oliver Stone or Michael Moore, who think there's a conspiracy behind every bed.
	So I'm not even going to go down that road.
	However, when it comes to the Persian Gulf War and the last war, you have to take a look at what would have happened without this.
	I mean, do you think Saddam Hussein, having the Kuwaiti assets, would not have been a problem?
	Do you think there wouldn't have been a real fight for power, this sort of pan-Arabism that has been so much a part of that regime where there ought to be one clear Arab leader?
	That's the view amongst many there.
	And they want to be that one clear Arab leader going back to Nasser and before that.
	Do you think that would have been better off if he had had all of that oil, all those assets?
	I don't think that's a slam dunk.
	You know, one of my favorite economists, Henry Hazlitt, who wrote a great book, Everybody Ought to Read, Economics in One Lesson, once said the problem with fighting government or talking against government is people can see what government does.
	They don't see what isn't seen, obviously.
	When government builds something, a building, a monument, anything, people see that.
	What they don't see is what would have happened in the private sector had government not wasted the money.
	There's an opportunity cost to everything government does.
	And the same is true in foreign policy.
	What you don't see is what would have happened had we not fought the Persian Gulf War, which, by the way, talk about international consensus.
	I mean, the UN.
	In fact, you could make the argument we should have gone further right into Baghdad.
	But that was an international affair.
	Now, as to the war in Iraq for the 100th time, the goal was after 9-11, let me repeat, we were attacked before Bush went into Iraq in 2003.
	The goal was to try to establish an alternative view in that region, a pro-Western Arab democracy that would grow in prosperity with their allies like the United States and give hope and an alternative to disaffected Arabs, to disaffected Muslims, to terrorists, potential terrorists.
	People would say, gee, I could go this route and live in a cave and kill people, or I can go to a very prosperous Baghdad.
	And that was the goal, whether you supported it or not.
	To argue that that was insincere or that didn't have any geopolitical weight behind it is absolute nonsense.
	So to be perfectly respectful, sir, enough of the conspiracy nonsense, and you can't ever predict the future.
	I mean, I never make predictions, especially about the future.
	But you can't go backwards and say this would have happened otherwise.
	We could have had many more 9-11s.
	1-800-282-2882, let's go to Chicago.
	And Mark, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	This is Mark, and I'm a first-time caller, so I'm a little nervous.
	You sound fine.
	I wanted to make a comment basically about the whole attitude towards Guantanamo Bay.
	And I think there's a lot of connection between that and the reaction to General Petraeus and his report and moveon.org and their basic pacifist approach.
	Whether the ones who are being the arm of that in government and suing things are actually as far as moveon.org or not, Whether they realize it or not, they're part of this whole rejection of the use of force ever at all as something that can be justified.
	There's really a sentimentality about, well, if we just sit down and talk with these people and if we would just be nice with them, then they'll be nice with us.
	And it totally rejects the idea that there could be something in human behavior and human actions that would be so unresponsive to that kind of thing that you would have to use force and use fear.
	Edmund Burke warned about this many, many years ago.
	The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
	And that's exactly what they want to do.
	Their idea of a foreign policy is watching Mars invades and watching Jack Nicholson say, can't we all just get along?
	It's kind of like a seventh grade foreign policy.
	There's evil in the world.
	You either confront it or you turn into Neville Chamberlain talking about peace in our time.
	And that we know what happened then, the onset of World War II.
	So you're quite right about this.
	I mean, this is the 60s generation, a little older, a little grayer.
	You know, this is the dirty little secret.
	People think that the Democrat Party has changed, that they're the new Democrats or this or that.
	They haven't changed their stripes at all.
	They haven't changed since McGovern.
	This is the triumph of McGovernism.
	There are a bunch of peace nicks who are very, very weak on national security, who think government's role is there to redistribute wealth as the world's largest charitable clearinghouse, not to protect property, but to redistribute it.
	These are the same old liberal Democrats coming out of the 1960s, and you couldn't be more correct.
	Now, unfortunately, they've got big-time international money behind them.
	I think, too, that beyond the liberal Democrat 60s idea, there really is deep down, there's a swing from, I think, a real reaction to maybe the overuse of force, you know, that, you know, when you have a heretic, you killed them, that was common in, you know, the 18, you know, or about,
	you know, 500 years ago and how you responded to people that are different than you.
	Well, it's very interesting.
	There's a reaction to that to say, oh, we just need to sit down and talk.
	But the thing is, is that that was maybe an overuse on that side, but on this side, there are situations that require the use of force.
	I think that's a very interesting Tolkien that really kind of exudes that whole balance of.
	Mark, I got to let you go, but you bring up a very, very salient point here.
	And it's not about that.
	You're quite right, that they're shy about using force.
	I mean, the essence of liberalism is using the force of government.
	Government, remember, has a monopoly on force.
	And liberals are not shy about using that to shut down talk radio or to ration health care by force to keep your kids in schools that may be not safe.
	We've had certainly witness of that.
	The question is, are you using force for legitimate means or illegitimate means?
	I happen to think, most conservatives happen to think, that protecting the United States of America with all its warts, still the freest, still the last best hope of freedom and prosperity on earth, is a legitimate use of force.
	They don't subscribe to that.
	They think the United States causes third world poverty, that we were responsible in the Cold War for all of the animus, the moral symmetry argument, one of the reasons they loved arms control agreements because, well, we were just as at fault as they were, so we ought to sign an arms control I don't subscribe to that.
	You don't subscribe to that.
	That really is the difference between liberals and conservatives.
	I mean, it's not that conservatives don't like government when it comes to projecting military force abroad when we have to.
	We're big government conservatives.
	When it comes to courts of justice and a police force, we're big government.
	We want an active, energetic executive, an energetic, legitimate role for government.
	But they want illegitimate government.
	And that's what we don't choose as principled, enumerated power-style conservatives.
	We want government to do what is written in the Constitution, what your state constitution says, those limited things that keep us free.
	They want government, in fact, to round us up in a collectivist society, not to use government to propel or to project military force abroad.
	We're at fault half the time, according to them.
	They want to use government at home to make certain that we do exactly what they say, which in many cases is unnatural, which is why you have to use force.
	And that's really the debate.
	The debate is not over big government versus small government.
	The debate is over legitimate government versus illegitimate government.
	And you can see it in all their domestic plans right here at home.
	I mean, why is it that every single crisis that is manufactured by the liberal left and their allies in the press, every single one needs a tax solution?
	We've got an education crisis, got to have more money.
	Every school district across the country, got to have more money each and every year.
	Health care crisis, got to have more money.
	We need a war surtax now, even though the economy is going gangbusters and throwing off more revenue than you can shake a stick at.
	We're actually now collecting more as a percentage of GDP than we have over the last four decades.
	So we don't need a war tax, but that's their answer every time.
	It's called control.
	I'm Jason Lewis in for El Rushbo on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
	Rush, we'll be back tomorrow up in Philadelphia for the Rush to Excellence Tour, or over in Philadelphia, I guess we should say.
	1-800-282-2882.
	That's 1-800-282-2882, the contact line for excellence in broadcasting.
	I am Jason Lewis.
	Glad to be behind the golden EIB Mike in the Attila the Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
	Snerdley standing by.
	Should we have any problems?
	He's kind of the caretaker today.
	And God knows we need one.
	Rick in Harrisburg, you're up next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Hi.
	Hi, Jason.
	My observation has to do with the CHIP S program.
	I guess I'm not real smart because I would have figured that the Republicans and at least somebody would have asked the same question.
	If you'll follow me on the logic here, maybe you can point where I'm getting all confused.
	If we're going to allow legal aliens to have, or their children or whatever, to be able to participate in the CHIP S program, isn't there an establishment of income required there?
	I mean, isn't it just for poor people?
	It's not for poor people, nor is it for children.
	This is the big canard here.
	I guess that just kind of feeds into the rest of this.
	How then does one document either your status as someone who rates, you know, under whatever threshold, whatever threshold you want to set?
	I mean, let's say that you are an illegal alien, but you're making $100,000 a year cutting grass with a business that doesn't show up on any tax records.
	And what's to distinguish that individual from somebody who is legal?
	Well, like so many of these sorts of income transfer, health, and human services programs, it is funneled through the states.
	The states are the conduit for social welfare.
	And so I can tell you that most, I shouldn't say most states, a number of states ask for waivers.
	As I told you earlier, in Minnesota, where I'm from, we already had a program of Hillary Care.
	It was called MinCare.
	And it subsidizes middle-class families.
	You can make six figures if you have enough kids and still get a subsidy.
	So how do you document that you're making six figures?
	They don't.
	Well, I mean, how do they document it?
	Come in, they ask you for your income, I presume.
	You know, if there's any question as to whether or not this is a socialized program, that should do it.
	If anybody can get to the table without any other sort of documentation, then.
	Well, no, hold on, hold on.
	I presume they ask, at least go through the motions of documentation.
	That's not what I object to.
	I object to is even if you have the documentation, what are we doing encouraging people, according to the CBO, encouraging people to drop private health care in favor of government health care?
	Why are we doing that?
	I'll tell you why.
	Because they need to snare everybody in the Hillary care net.
	The goal of all liberals is to get everybody dependent upon something and then, in effect, buy their votes.
	And that's what this, I mean, assuming that nobody's cheating on their income levels, Rick.
	Nobody's cheating.
	They're giving them, I make $75,000 a year.
	In New Jersey, in New Jersey, they said we're going to retain our S-CHIP eligibility at 350% of the poverty level, and we don't care.
	That's what we're going to do.
	So they're encouraging people who have private health care insurance to switch for a better government-subsidized deal.
	Now, as you point out, if that isn't the first step, frankly, it's not even the first step.
	If that isn't the old Robert Woods Johnson Foundation Hillary Care town meeting health care nonsense, I don't know what is.
	I can understand why the liberal left and the Democrat Party want to do that.
	They are put on earth to redistribute wealth.
	Somebody ought to be put on earth to defend it.
	And I would think it would be Republicans in the U.S. Senate.
	Unfortunately, it's not.
	You've got Charles Grassley of Iowa, last seen demanding taxpayers subsidize ethanol, demanding that the president be overridden.
	You've got Oren Hatch asked, are you going to override the president on the yes-chip veto?
	You bet you're sweet bippy I am.
	Orin's been spending a whole lot of time with Ted Kennedy lately.
	I mean, this is a betrayal of the platform of conservatism.
	You've got a president who is courageously leading on this, getting beat up.
	You have the House Republicans in the minority who are trying to lead on this.
	They need your help because in the next two weeks, actually next week and a half, you're going to see an onslaught by the usual suspects here.
	Shona in Endicott, New York, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	Are you still there?
	I hope so.
	Okay, I made kind of a weird noise.
	I'm not sure.
	Okay, I've got two points.
	That's probably Henry Waxman bugging the line.
	Don't worry about it.
	Okay, well, the first thing is on torture.
	You went back to World War II to pull out justification, but you forget that Congress during World War II actually declared war.
	And the Congress that we have now didn't have enough guts to do that.
	Well, there's a grain of truth to that.
	We did have the military authorization to go into Iraq and giving the president to use any means necessary.
	But you have to remember now, what would you do?
	What do you do if you catch the mastermind of another 9-11?
	We've got solid evidence that he knows where the bombs are planted.
	And he says, well, the International Red Cross told me I have to give you my serial number, and I'd give that if I had one, but I'm not in an organized military, so I can't.
	What do you do?
	If I was in that place, and if, let's say, let's put me in a terrorist mindset, I'd stall you for as long as possible to let them take off the to get the bombs off, especially if it was close to the end.
	I mean, what can you do in 53 or 3?
	I mean, if you kill me under torture, it's okay.
	Well, hold that thought because I want to come back and address that.
	I mean, that's exactly why the CIA and others are saying, look, some of these methods, which, by the way, I don't believe are torture.
	If you use these methods in training American troops to go abroad and fight, I don't know why you can't use them on detainees.
	But that's exactly why the authorities say this stuff works and we've got reams of information using it.
	Back right after this, don't go away.
	You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
	You know, it might be interesting to muse to contemplate the notion, instead of quibbling about what defines torture in this memo that the Democrats are all upset about, for some particular politician or a candidate perhaps just to stand up and say, Look, if push comes to shove and it means saving an American city by getting information out of a bad guy, I'll use any means necessary.
	Wouldn't that be refreshing?

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