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May 1, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:40
May 1, 2009, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, it's good that I can make you smile in there, Mr. Snerdley.
Boy, I never saw such a dour, depressed look.
I said, what's bothering you?
He said, the news every day.
It's just bad.
I said, what news today?
He said, we're going to get a younger liberal for 50 more years in the court.
I said something to Snerdley that I will say to you that brightened his smile.
And that is that Arlen Specter may have done us a favor by switching parties.
I'm going to explain this and lots of other stuff as we get going on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
I thought that's why you were in a foul mood.
Snerdley hates Open Line Friday.
I love it.
He hates it.
There aren't any restrictions.
I would think it'd be easier for you.
Anyway, Open Line Friday, when we go to the phones, whatever you want to talk about, it's fine.
That's not the case the rest of the week.
But on Friday, I mean, this, folks, this is one of the largest, greatest career risks anyone in major media has ever taken.
Turning over the content of the program to rank amateurs.
Lovable rank amateurs, nevertheless.
So 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program, email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
I guess about 45 minutes ago, I'm sitting here minding my own business, bothering nobody in the process of doing show prep, and I get an email from a drive-by media guy that I like, Chris Salizza, who writes the blog The Fix at the Washington Post.
And he says, hey, I'm doing a story here on Souter and the Supreme Court nomination that Obama's got coming up here.
And I want to know if you think that the Republicans will be making a mistake by really opposing this, or should they not do anything?
What damage can the Republicans do to this?
And I'm paraphrasing the question.
I wrote him back and I said, you know, I look at all of this through a different template than you guys do.
I said, the fun for me is going to be watching all the nutcases on the left go wacko trying to convince Obama to pick one of their own.
That's, I mean, the Republicans, I told him, the Republicans can, you know, anytime they seriously contrast themselves with Obama, I think it's a win-win for them.
But I said, you're focused on what the Republicans are going to do.
When did it change that you don't focus on the people who have power?
I mean, you continue to look at the Republicans here, but the Democrats are the ones that have power.
And the real fun for me is going to be watching all these wacko-fringe nutcases from the blogs and everything else start pressuring Obama to pick somebody like Ward Churchill.
Now, we've got some great audio soundbites to what Obama thinks of the court anyway that's coming up on the program today.
I also told Chris, I said, I'm also she going to keep a sharp eye to see if his nominee has a tax problem, because that seems to be standard operating procedure for Obama cabinet picks.
And now we'll see if it holds for Supreme Court nomination.
The search will be on for a Supreme Court nominee who has a tax problem.
And Supreme Court Justice David Souter leaving the Supreme Court in June.
So all the liberal eyes now turn to Obama for a replacement, a name, his first appointment destined to be reported, by the way, whoever he picks.
Just like Gibbs, the greatest PR guy, the greatest spokesman ever, whoever he picks, we're going to hear that's the smartest, the best.
Wow, nobody could have ever found a person this good and this qualified to be on the Supreme Court.
We all know the nominee is going to be a liberal.
I mean, that's a given.
But will it be an African-American liberal?
Will it be a female liberal?
Will it be an African-American female liberal?
Or will it be an African-American female liberal from Chicago?
Or will it be a Latino Latina, I should say, a Hispanic woman?
Now, the early betting right now is on Sonia Sotomayer, who is Hispanic.
But it's a little early to go on that stuff.
As I say, whoever, whatever names surface, there are going to be some leftists unhappy about it.
And they'll guard.
And now you have to understand, too, that when liberals start choosing nominees to the Supreme Court, they don't necessarily go find people who have any knowledge of the law.
Obama looks at the Supreme Court.
Well, you'll hear this coming up in the sound bites.
Obama looks at the court, and he wants people who have the proper feelings.
He wants people who empathize with the downtrodden.
If they know the law, so much the better.
But they don't.
And you know, a Supreme Court justice does not have to be a lawyer.
Supreme Court justice does not have to have ever argued a case in court.
Supreme Court justice does not have to.
Supreme Court justice can wear $540 tennis shoes like Michelle Obama wore at a Feed the Poor thing the other day.
Yeah, they said Para Lan Vin, is that the French dawn you wouldn't know how do you pronounce the French fashion house L-A-N-V-I-N, Len Vin?
Anyway, she wears some t-shirts, some tennis shoes there that cost, apparently, according to the New York Daily News, is $540 a pair while she's out there feeding the poor.
And they asked her office about, come on, they said they snorted.
It's just shoes.
It's just shoes.
You can buy a pair of KEDs that look about the same for $15.
They don't quite look the same, but they're close to looking the same.
Now, no, no, $15.
Let me find the, I've got it right here.
I've got it.
$35, I'm sorry, $35 champion canvas blue multi keds.
Right in here.
And they're purple, and they're light blue and they're yellow.
And you can pick your colors and $35 a pair, as opposed to $540.
But remember now, she's beloved, and she's his shoes.
It's just shoes, they say.
By the way, if Barack Obama's press conferences were an actual television show, they would be canceled.
In February, if February 9th, the SOTO, the pseudo-State of the Union address, $49.5 million watched.
His March 24th primetime press conference, 40.4 million watched, down from 49.
And Wednesday night, 28.8 million.
He's down from 49.5 million to 28.8 million.
And since February 9th, if this was a reality show, it would be in trouble.
Now, if the press actually asks some tough questions at these things, the ravings might come back.
Since that's not going to happen, the Obama primetime press conferences are in trouble, regardless what the critics and the media say.
It was said to have been an unbelievable performance, enchanting, dreamy, brilliant, steamy even.
But fewer and fewer Americans are watching.
Boy, have you noticed, folks, the outrage today from several quarters over the Chrysler deal?
And it's about what we touched on yesterday, Obama dumping on the hedge funds and dumping on the debt holders.
Oh, there's some real anger about this today.
I'm going to try to help you make sense of this.
It can get kind of convoluted.
One of my talents, of course, is making the complex understandable.
I'm going to give that a shot.
I'm also going to explain to you, with the help of an attorney who has a blog.
His name is Michael Dorff, Cornell Law School.
His blog is Dorf on Law.
He had a post a couple days before Souter's retirement was in play.
So his post has nothing to do with Souter quitting.
But it's all about how Arlen Specter changing parties and thus leaving the Senate Republican side on the Judiciary Committee may now actually help the Republicans filibuster nominees in the committee and prevent any of these nominees from getting out of the committee.
To break a filibuster, the law says the Senate rules say you have to have one member of the minority vote with the majority.
Well, that surefire vote was Specter, and he's gone.
So the Republicans, the remaining Republicans on the committee, if they wanted to, if they wanted to hold firm, they could lock up whoever the nominee is in the committee with a quasi-filibuster.
The weak link now, and this is not all that encouraging, the weak link is Lindsey Gramnesty.
And Lindsey Gramnesty, remember, was one of the gang of 14.
But if Lindsey Gramnesty can be made to hold firm, it's just, it's something that could happen.
It's a possibility if the Republicans want to play the game that way.
I'll give you the details of this.
Lots of things happening on the program today.
You sit tight.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Everyone's a winner.
This does the well-known crooner group Hot Chocolate.
We're back.
Great to have you with us.
Open Line Friday.
Let's go to the audio soundbites and let's listen to what the drive-bys are saying as it regards the Supreme Court opening created by the announced retirement of David Souter.
We have a montage here today.
Robin Roberts of ABC, George Steffi Stephanopoulos of ABC, Chuck Todd from NBC, and Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel talking about who Obama might pick.
It's widely expected that the selection will be a woman.
President Obama has said that he wants to add another woman to the court.
I would say the leading candidate is Judge Sonia Sotomayer.
She would be not only a woman, but the first Hispanic.
The pressure to appoint a woman.
But the Hispanic community really would like to see the first ever Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
A lot of pressure to appoint a woman, a lot of pressure to appoint a Hispanic, the first Hispanic.
How about a twofer, Sonia Sotomayer, an appeals court judge, an Hispanic woman?
You heard it here first.
Well, the pressure already being brought to bear, according to drive-by, is for an Hispanic woman, the pressure, it must be unbearable for Obama.
The pressure being brought to him.
By the way, somebody sent me a note during the break saying I mispronounced Sonia Sotomayor's name.
that her name is actually pronounced Sonia Sotomayor.
Not as in mayor, spelled S-O-T-O-M-A-Y-O-R.
These guys all pronounce it Sotomayor, as I did, but I'm told it's pronounced Sotomayor.
Regardless, we're covering our bases.
Who is she?
She is a judge now on the Court of Appeals.
I'm not sure which circuit she's on, but she's one of these judges that allows her personal views to be a factor in the way she decides cases.
She gave a speech at Berkeley in 2002.
She said she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their experiences as women and people of color in their decision-making, which she believes should affect our decisions as judges.
And that's right up Obama's alley.
That's, as you will hear in the program today, that's exactly the kind of judge Obama wants.
In the recent case, Ricci versus De Stefano, Judge Sotomayor, was chastised by another Clinton appointee, Jose Cabranis, for going to extraordinary lengths to dispense with claims of unfair treatment raised by firefighters.
Judge Sotomayor's panel of judges heard a case raising important questions under Title VII, equal protection law, but attempted to dispose of the firefighters' arguments in a summary order until called out by Judge Cabranis.
The Supreme Court has agreed to review the case.
So, anyway, that's the big name.
There are other names on the list, too.
If you're looking at women, Elena Kagan, Diane Wood, we'll see.
But it's not going to change the balance of anything, folks.
I mean, Souter, for the most part, votes with the libs.
Whoever Obama picks is going to be a lib, probably with a tax problem.
And so the balance won't be upset.
It's just that we've got to get a younger lib.
But we all knew this.
I mean, this is the exact kind of thing that's going to happen on Supreme Court nominations.
What with Obama winning the presidency?
Now, all this talk about Souter retiring and the fight over his replacement and so forth, there is a, you know, its conventional wisdom was that Arlen Specter defecting to the Democrats put them close to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which would allow Obama to just skate through his agenda.
And on most subjects, it appears to be true.
However, Specter's defection may actually end up giving Republicans the ability to filibuster judicial nominees at the Judiciary Committee level so that the nominees never get out of committee.
Now, those are big ifs, but it's possible.
Here's the explanation from Professor Michael Dorff of Cornell Law School on his blog, Dorf on Law, and this is written two days before Souter announced he was quitting.
Does Arlen Specter's defection from Republican to Democrats strengthen the president's hand in Congress?
Perhaps overall, but not on judicial appointments, because breaking the equivalent of a filibuster in the Senate Judiciary Committee requires the consent of at least one member of the minority, in this case, the Republicans.
Now, before today, Specter was likely to be that one Republican who would vote to break a filibuster on the Republican side, but he's gone.
Here's the rule.
Senate Judiciary Committee rule.
Bringing a matter to a vote.
The chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the committee to a vote.
If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a roll call vote of the committee shall be taken.
And debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with 10 votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority.
Now, this is interesting.
Specter, Specter could allow a nominee out of committee if Specter was a member of the Republican minority, but as part of the majority, he's just another Democrat vote.
Now, here are the other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley, John Kyle, Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Gramnesty, John Cornyn, and Tom Coburn.
The weak link, obviously, is Lindsey Gramnesty.
He was one of the members of the gang of 14.
But if Lindsey Gramnesty chose to stay the course and vote with the Republicans, they may not be able to stop runaway spending or any of that, but they may be able to stop judicial nominations.
Specter may have ended up handing the Republicans a gift in this regard.
Now, folks, admittedly, this is a bit of a long shot because this is going to require that the Republicans have the fortitude to even do this, to even try it.
Because if they did, if they essentially filibustered the vote in the Judiciary Committee, the media is going to be all over these.
I mean, it is going to, it's going to be like Dunkirk.
It's going to be like Hiroshima.
It's going to be like Nagasaki.
I mean, nuclear ammo is going to rain down on these guys if they try it.
But it's possible they could do it.
And if so, now you might be thinking, well, they just change the rules.
Well, how likely is it that they'll change the rules?
They adopt the rules at the start of a congressional year.
They can be amended, but it's a tough thing to do.
And Dingy Harry, he's already cooked his goose there with his insistence on rules regarding the seating of Roland Burris, the renegade replacement for Obama in the Senate as nominated by Blago, Rod Blagojevich.
So fascinating to watch and learn all the possibilities here in the process here of stonewalling any particular judicial nominee that the Republicans choose to filibuster or stop.
Next up is Chrysler.
And folks, actually, no, let me not start this now because we only got a couple of minutes before the break.
Let's go to soundbite number four.
This show you that the way the libs look at judges, Supreme Court or otherwise, it's all about identity politics.
On today's show today, Matt Lauer talking to Chuck Todd.
Now, why don't we take these two things and combine them, the pressure to appoint a woman, the pressure to appoint an Hispanic?
We look at somebody like Sonia Sotomayor, who is an Hispanic woman, a federal appeals judge.
What are her chances, old Chuck?
Well, I think a lot of people look at him and they seem to be pretty good.
She both checks a lot of boxes on the academic front.
She's been on the federal bench quite a bit, so she certainly has the qualifications.
The background is very important.
We heard President Obama as candidate Obama talk about somebody who didn't necessarily grow up of privilege or grow up in the academic world.
And so she does check all the correct boxes.
So you see, it is exactly, as I said at the top of the program, judicial qualifications are not the primary concern.
Empathy, feelings, identity politics.
Got to go get a woman.
Got to go get an Hispanic woman.
Now, this is the media speculation here.
The media is attempting, obviously, to shape this.
And we don't know to what extent the Obama White House has leaked.
If anybody, Sonia Sotomayor's name, but you can see that clearly there's a steamroller effect here gathering for her nomination, and nobody's talking about her legal qualifications.
That side's not.
They're talking about the things that you notice about her when you look at her.
She's a woman and she's an Hispanic, and somehow that's all you need to be qualified.
Okay, so according to the Obama administration, folks, we are now profiling candidates for the Supreme Court.
They have to check all the right boxes.
That's what Chucker Todd said at NBC.
That's Sonia's Sotomayor.
She checks all the right boxes.
We're seeking out certain races and sexists.
Profiling, bad for law enforcement, but good for judicial selection.
Maybe Chucker Todd can tell us when it's appropriate to use race and gender when it's not.
I guess it's perfectly fine for liberal Democrats to use race and gender and make sure they check all the right boxes.
In other words, profile.
So profiling.
This is what I meant.
This is what I meant when I said the fun for me is going to be watching all these liberal groups go nuts advocating for the people they want Obama to pick.
And they're going to go nuts on the basis of identity politics and profiling and all that.
Remember when George W. Bush appointed Alberto Gonzalez to Attorney General, the first Hispanic ever?
Alberto Gonzalez was attacked.
Bush got no credit for the appointment with the media.
When Bush's father appointed the second black to the court, same thing.
It wasn't a real Hispanic, and Clarence Thomas wasn't an authentic black guy.
So both Clarence Thomas and Alberto Gonzalez under attack from day one, but now the Obama administration profiling for Supreme Court nominations.
Let's see what kind of scrutiny Obama's nominee gets.
I can tell you there won't be any scrutiny.
What we're going to get, we're going to get, why, this is the smartest woman or smartest Hispanic or smartest whatever they pick ever.
This is the most qualified judge ever.
Oliver Wendell Holmes is on third base compared to this person.
It's just going to be the same hype that we got about Robert Gibbs.
Well, there's never, ever been a better press spokesman, press secretary than that idiot.
It's going to be the same.
Nobody's scrutiny.
To give you, here, illustration, this happened today on Scarborough's show on PMS NBC.
He was talking to the, I guess, Tavis Smiley, he's on PB, he checks all the boxes too.
Tavis Smiley is male, he's black, he's minority, and he works PBS.
So Tavis Smiley, perfect guest for NBC, checks all the boxes.
And Scarborough said to Tavis Smiley, Tavis, let's talk about identity politics.
Thurgood Marshall replaced in the court by Clarence Thomas.
Do you think that African Americans deserve to have a justice on the court that represents the majority of their Joe?
Joe, please say you didn't ask that.
Joe, that's I don't care who the guest is.
What are you doing?
I love Joe Scarborough.
I don't.
Asking Tavis Smiley, do you think that African Americans deserve to have a justice on the court that represents the majority of their Joe?
You've got a book coming out on conservatism and you ask that?
Anyway, here's what Tavis Charlie, Smiley, which, again, perfect guest for MSNBC.
He checks all the boxes.
He's black, the minority, and works at PBS.
Here's his answer.
I think that every president ought to consider how the court ought to be balanced.
As an African American, I will sit and tell you that I do not agree with, there's almost nothing that Clarence Thomas has ruled on.
I can think of one case where he would in a cross-braining case, which shocked a heck.
I mean, I almost went to full cardiac arrest when he came down on the right side of this cross-braining case, but it was, in fact, a cross-braining case.
And my thing is, if you can't get that right, Justice Thomas, having said that, there is an African American on the court.
And if identity politics are going to play here, there is not a Hispanic on the court.
And I don't think you ought to, you know, you pick and choose based upon ethnicity.
But I think it is true, though, that we live now, Joe, in the most multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic America ever, and that everybody in this great country deserves to see himself or herself represented in their court system.
That is just stupid.
That is a perfect illustration of what the hell is wrong with the whole culture and the whole country.
Tavis, Clarence Thomas' remarks are just embarrassingly naive and ignorant.
Asians don't have anybody in the court.
I don't hear them complaining.
I don't, even beyond that, though, just he goes, he says here, I don't think we ought to do identity politics, and then goes on to lay out how we need to have virtually every folks.
We got so many mutts in this country now.
There's been so much.
I don't know how you, we're not just Asians anymore or white Americans.
I mean, everybody is something of we've all got so much.
I know we're just, whatever happened to concept, we're all just Americans.
And what about finding people with the best qualifications?
This is, after all, the Supreme Court ever found a logical reason to go out and find the best judge, the best candidate, the best American you can find?
Well, now we're being told that it is not only okay, it is required that we profile.
And in this opening, we got to get, we got to make, we got to, we got to get the female Hispanic on there.
We got to get the female.
It's just, it's, to listen to this stuff is just, I mean, I sit here and laugh about it, but it's just, it's a great illustration of what the left has done to our entire culture.
Merit doesn't matter.
Pandering to minorities is everything.
Now, here's Obama.
Now, let's, this is July 18th, 2007.
This is in Washington during the annual Planned Parenthood Conference.
Obama said this about the Supreme Court.
We need somebody who's got the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled.
Well, this is, I mean, this is two years ago, a year and a half ago now.
That's President Obama before Planned Parenthood.
So we need somebody with empathy.
This has nothing to do with legal cases.
Yep.
Here.
Well, I'm sure we can find one.
Now, here's what we need.
We need a teenage single mother who is gay, who's a lesbian, who's dirt poor, African-American, and disabled.
Or if we can't find that person, we need a bigger Supreme Court.
So you're going to find, I'm sure we can find in any blue city a poor minority teenage mother who can barely get around.
Disabled, lesbian, had the kid with surrogacy or artificial insemination.
I'm sure we can find him.
You know they're all over the place.
We can find one.
Whether they're qualified to be on the court doesn't matter because their qualifications, Obama just said what they are.
Now here he is again in Las Vegas.
This is November.
2007, and it's a presidential Democrat presidential debate.
Barack Obama and the moderator Wolf Blitzer have this exchange about the Supreme Court.
Sometimes we're only looking at academics or people who've been in the courts.
If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that's the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.
Fine.
That means we need to get criminals, too.
I mean, obviously, if you're criminal, the system hasn't worked for you.
So we need to get lawbreakers.
We need to add lawbreakers to the other lists identity.
Who's going to vet these people?
You know where?
I'll tell you where we're going to get the next.
If it's not Sonia, I mean, Sonia Sotomayor may be good, but she doesn't fit all this stuff.
She is sadly lacking in the qualifications Obama himself has laid out.
It seems to me that to find the next Supreme Court justice or nominee, we're going to have to go to the Jerry Springer show, and he's the guy that's going to vet them.
What sound bike did I leave off with?
What?
We're up to number eight.
So I left off with number seven.
Play number seven again.
Here's Barack Obama, November 15, 2007, Democrat debate, presidential debate.
Wolf Blitzer and Obama have this exchange.
Sometimes we're only looking at academics or people who've been in the courts.
If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that's the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.
Thank you.
Yeah, and he also said he wants somebody to be poor.
Clarence Thomas grew up poor, Mr. President, just to throw that in.
Now, there's some other people.
By the way, Sonia Sotomayor is Puerto Rican.
This is going to make the Mexicans and the Cubans angry.
There will not be unity here on the Hispanic side.
Sonia Sotomayor is Puerto Rican, and that's ignoring the Mexicans, and that's ignoring the Cubans.
And by the way, folks, since we want people, he says, what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for you, we got to get an illegal alien on the Supreme Court.
We need an illegal immigrant on the Supreme Court.
They fit the definition of what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them.
The court is looking at foreign law more and more.
Shouldn't we have a representative from the United Nations on the Supreme Court?
And I find it curious, folks.
I find it very, very curious that nobody has mentioned a Muslim or an Islamist.
I mean, they live here, too.
And they suffer, as we all know, vast discrimination.
So what Obama is really looking for here, folks, what he really means with all these comments, he's looking for a radical who is a minority who will use the court to advance Obama's political agenda.
That's what, in the being serious about it, this is what it all boils down to.
If he's looking for a criminal, then there's no better nominee.
I mean, you guys talk about a guy who checks all the boxes.
Al C. Hastings, black, former judge, impeached as a judge, now member of Congress.
He's a confirmed criminal.
And criminals, you know, the system's not worked for him.
We need a criminal.
We need an illegal immigrant.
We need a Muslim Islamist.
We need a single mother who's gay, very poor.
I mean, these are the qualifications Obama's throw.
It's looking worse and worse for poor old Sonia Sotomayor as the day goes on here.
She simply doesn't check enough boxes.
Chuck Todd says he checks all the boxes because we listen to Obama describe his own qualifications.
Sonia Sotomayor is a piker.
Here, let's go to May 11th.
Last year, CNN's late edition, Wolf Blitzer interviewing Obama.
And Blitzer says, are there members or justices right now upon whom you would model, you would look at?
Who do you like?
What I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can't have access to political power, and as a consequence, can't protect themselves from being dealt with sometimes unfairly.
So he wants a judge sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside.
So it's all about an advance.
Get Solinsky.
Just go get Resurrect Solinsky.
Exhume the body and nominate him because that's what this is.
Rules for radicals.
Put one of these clowns on the Supreme Court.
And the more boxes you can check off on the identity politics side, the better.
Now, I have a, see, I told you so here from my own program October 28th, last year.
This is what I said on this program about then Senator Obama's philosophy of the Supreme Court.
You know, legal justice is an entirely different thing than political and economic justice.
And Obama wants the court to be concerned with economic justice.
He wants legal cases that end up before federal courts, including the Supreme Court.
He wants judges on those courts to look at economic and political aspects of the case, not the legal definition of justice.
Because the legal definition of justice is not what he's interested in.
Economic justice.
Punishing achievers.
Labeling them guilty when they haven't done anything.
Returning the nation's wealth to its quote-unquote rightful owners.
And wherever he can advance that agenda, Supreme Court's a great place.
These people end up for life there.
So let's go back to 2001.
Chicago FM radio station, the host interviewing state Senator Obama.
And her question, we're joined here by Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator from the 13th District, senior lecturer in a law school, University of Chicago.
And this is what Obama said about the redistribution of wealth.
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote.
I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order.
And as long as I could pay for it, I'd be okay.
But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.
And sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in the society.
There you have it.
That's Barack Obama eight years ago in Chicago on an FM radio station.
Redistribution of wealth, economic justice.
That's the court.
That's what it's to be used for.
In this next bite, he's very upset.
The Warren Court was not radical enough.
As radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical.
It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted.
And Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.
And that hasn't shifted.
And one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.
And in some ways, we still suffer from that.
So there you have it, his own words, and he's not changed.
Redistribution of wealth, returning the wealth of the nation to its rightful owners.
That's the purpose of judges.
That's the purpose of courts.
And here again, he addresses this.
He talks about how al-Qaeda is not constrained by a constitution.
Here he explains what that means.
He feels constrained by a constitution, a series of negative rights.
It says what the government can't do, what the government can't do, but the constitution doesn't say what the government can do.
And he wants to change that.
And he wants to have judges on the Supreme Court that are going to facilitate and implement his radical social agenda.
It has nothing to do per se with justice, legal justice, or the law.
We will be right back.
Now, interesting here, folks, the way Obama looks at filling openings on courts, judges who feel inexperienced rather than judges who use the law.
I think you could look at the Chrysler bankruptcy that Obama put together and say the same principle.
We need to solve the problems of Chrysler and General Motors on the basis of feel, not the law.
And in that way, the bondholders get shafted and they get called out as a bunch of selfish SOBs by the president.
I'll explain all this when we come back.
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