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March 29, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:52
March 29, 2012, Thursday, Hour #2
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Why are they trying to charge the captain with flight interference?
Are you really, are you serious?
Yes, I know he went nuts, but he still interfered with the flight.
He was kicked out of the cockpit and tried to get back in.
I don't care whether he went nuts or not.
They're going to charge him.
The airlines may start trying to make excuses for that based on, you know what that's like?
I'll tell you something.
This is, you know, I'm caught up in cultural things this week, folks.
I can't help it because of what's happening with the Supreme Court and everything.
But I saw something today in reading about the healthcare debate, some other court decisions that have been discussed here.
Do you realize how many cases are decided by plea bargain today versus actual trial?
I mean, even huge criminal cases.
It's in the 90%.
I think that's the number I read.
If that's wrong, it's extremely high.
We don't have trials anymore.
We have plea bargains.
Most convictions result from plea bargains, not trials.
The airline in this case, if they try to excuse this guy because he went nuts, they're in the business of selling seats and selling safety and selling security, and they've got to punish it when they see fit rather than plea bargain it away.
You know, what good is an insanity defense here?
How does that help anybody?
The guy still did what he did.
And if all of this plea bargain stuff, insanity defense, that's not who I was.
So many people are escaping responsibility for what they do because of this.
This guy did what he did.
He terrorized the passengers in that plane.
Now, he might have been driven nuts by any number of things, but the fact that he was nuts does not change what he did.
And he posed a great threat.
He posed a great, they had to kick the guy out of the cockpit, and then he was trying his best to get back in.
It took four people to subdue him.
For a pass.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh here, the EIB Network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Look, if part of me can relate to the pilot, hell, I feel like running up and down the aisles.
Some of the news out there today, what's happening to the country, I can relate a little bit.
The guy running down the aisles here, they're trying to bring us all down.
Well, don't we all feel that way about the Obama?
They're trying to bring us all down.
But we're not going crazy.
We're, well, some are not going crazy.
I count myself among those not going crazy.
We're doing what we can to stop this.
Okay, now, let me move on to talk to the judge last night about severability.
Severability is something that I misunderstood.
Maybe I'm the only one who did.
I don't want to say, I said in the last hour that everybody misunderstood it because the way it's reported.
That may not be the case.
I'm sure my legal, legal friends understand it and would not be surprised to hear what the judge told me.
People confuse the rule on severability.
In this case, you have Obamacare and the mandate.
And what I always thought severability was that if the Congress puts a clause in the bill, the severability clause, then it's a matter of law that any portion of the law can be thrown out, but the rest of the law stands.
That I was told by my judge buddy is not what it is.
The rule is not whether the constitutional parts of a bill can stand if one or more other parts are unconstitutional.
Instead, the rule is whether the Congress would have enacted the bill without the unconstitutional parts.
Now, in the case of Obamacare, no one is arguing that the bill would have passed without the mandate.
That's the test.
In fact, it most certainly would not have.
The mandate was the funding mechanism.
So the rule here is whether Congress would have enacted the bill without the unconstitutional parts.
That's what the judges are supposed to look at in severability.
And it was pointed out to me that Justice Scalia has picked up on this.
The way Congress deals with this kind of issue is to put a severability clause in the bill to specify that if one part of the bill is declared unconstitutional, the other parts will stand nonetheless because that's what they intend.
A severability clause is absent in Obamacare and further, and this I did know, and in fact passed on to you, the legislative history of Obamacare proves conclusively that they affirmatively took out the severability clause.
It used to be in an early version of the bill.
And then for whatever reason, the Democrats took it out.
They took the severability clause out.
Therefore, according to the letter of the law, the entire bill must be stricken.
According to the letter of the law, all of Obamacare must now be thrown out because Congress never intended the rest of the bill to pass without the mandate in it.
That's what severability means, as explained to me by my judge buddy.
The bill has to be stricken in total according to the letter of the law.
In fact, my judge buddy wrote, ain't no question about it.
And then I said, okay, well, what's going to happen?
And I said, that's interesting.
The letter of the law says the law's got to be thrown out.
And I still say, okay, what's going to happen?
Acknowledging the letter of the law will not matter here.
Politics will intercede.
So I asked my judge buddy what's going to happen.
He said, I handicap the case at three to one, the mandate will be stricken.
Even odds, the whole thing gets tossed.
There's an outside chance the five-vote conservative majority will be enhanced by one or more libs.
It could be 6372 to throw the whole thing out, according to my judge buddy.
Letter of the law says it must be stricken.
The whole law must be thrown out if they throw the mandate out.
And there's no severability clause because the absence of a severability clause means, according to rule, that Congress didn't intend any of the rest of it to pass without the mandate.
They put the severability clause in to stipulate the rest of the bill we like, the rest of the bill, constitutional, the rest of the bill okay.
If you throw anything out, the rest stays.
They took that clause out, meaning they didn't stand behind the bill if a part of it was found unconstitutional.
So I wrote back for clarification on this.
I said, under your explanation, is it even harder for a bill to survive?
Because there has to be a showing that Congress intended it.
And without the severability clause, it's really hard to prove that they would have intended the bill to stand without the stricken part.
He wrote back and said, correct.
That's the rule on the severability clause.
And that's the letter of the law.
Which is another thing I find fascinating.
The letter of the law is the letter of the law.
The letter of the law says because there was no severability clause.
And if the mandate gets tossed, the whole thing has to go.
But doubt that that'll happen.
So the letter of the law will be moderated with political considerations.
Because then the reality sets in.
My judge buddy then said to me, Are these conservative judges really going to want to throw out an entire piece of legislation by the first black president?
Are these judges going to really want to have their names on the first black president's signature bill being unconstitutional?
Are these judges going to want to have their names on the whole thing, regardless whose bill it is, being declared unconstitutional?
Thereby confirming what we all know, that judges do pay attention.
They pay attention to election results.
They pay attention to polls.
They pay attention to the culture.
But they shouldn't.
This is why they have lifetime appointments.
It's expressly why they have lifetime appointments so that they are immune from political, cultural, social concerns of the day.
Now, Snerdley is saying, well, if the letter of the law isn't really the letter of the law, isn't the new precedent that there is no letter of the law?
No, the letter of the law is the law is always bendable, flexible.
The scales of justice, not Snerdley, you think this would be the first case where the letter of the law has been the letter of the law is living and breathing like the Constitution.
The letter of the law, you and I all know, in reality, the letter of the law depends on the prosecutor, depends on the judge, and it get this is people are imperfect.
Judges, members of Congress, everybody, we are all imperfect.
That's what the law is supposed to be is a guideline.
It's an establishment of moral character and fiber in one sense.
Libs hate that, by the way, when you say the law is rooted in morality.
They hate it, but you can't deny it.
But they despise that because they don't like any morality, period.
But the letter of the law, Snerdley, depends on your alphabet.
It's no more complicated than that.
The letter of the law is still subject to interpretation.
Otherwise, every decision would be nine-zip, wouldn't it?
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Snerdly loves it.
He athlete loves it.
The letter of the law depends on your alphabet.
It's like the NAALCP.
Their letter of the law is going to be much different than, say, the SEIU.
It really depends on your alphabet.
That's why we have critical alphabet theory.
On the left, you haven't heard of that?
Critical alphabet theory.
It goes along with critical race theory, Derek Bell, critical alphabet theory, and it has to do with the letter of the law and the spirit of the law and the intent of the law and how the hell can we break the law.
And we go to the phone, Charlottesville, Virginia.
We're going to start with Jeff here on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Rush, how's it going?
Very good, sir.
Thank you.
With this whole Obamacare Supreme Court case going on, all the pundits are speculating, is this going to be good or bad for Obama, depending on if it's struck down, if it's upheld.
And now that it seems that Romney is probably going to be our guy, well, potentially could be our guy.
Well, it's not as easy as I know it appears that, but right, the only way, I'm going to put this in perspective for you, and I'm still nonpartisan in this.
The other two are going to have to quit.
They're going to have to resign.
Otherwise, Romney is going to have trouble getting to 1,144 delegates if they stay in.
The only way he can get there prior to conventions, if they pull out.
It's, you know, I'm like you.
The Republican primary has been going on over there here with Obama this week, and I've been distracted with a couple other things, but I've kept up with it.
And Santorum's went in couple here and there.
We've got Marco Rubio endorsing Romney, and Rubio says, I'm endorsing him because of what I heard Obama say to Medvedev.
He said, you've got to give me some flexibility, Dimitri.
Hang with me here.
When I get re-elected, I'll get rid of the nukes then.
Nobody can stop me.
And Medvedev says, okay, good.
I'll tell Vlad.
Well, Rubio heard that.
That's all I need to hear.
I'm endorsing Romney.
Don't ask me what that means.
I'm just, that's what he said.
Right.
So, but it's not yet etched in stone.
And Romney had another gaffe.
He's talking about his dad who used to run American Motors.
George Romney, then they made Jeeps and Ramblers and so forth.
And they had three plants, and one at Kenosha, Wisconsin, one in Detroit, somewhere else.
And Romney's in Wisconsin campaigning.
And he started bragging how his dad used to close down factories in Michigan, but not in Wisconsin.
He's campaigning in Wisconsin.
Yeah, my dad, he shut down factories, but he did it in Michigan.
People are going, no, you don't brag about it.
So this isn't yet done.
Okay, well, let's just say it's looking maybe more likely than not.
All right, grant you that.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
I know you have a different point to make, but I wanted to get those factoids out there.
No, that's good.
Let's just say if he's the nominee and they strike down this law, Obamacare.
Is that an argument that he could make to say, to differentiate himself from Obama saying, look, his healthcare law was struck down, mine was not, and they're completely different.
Well, you are very shrewd.
There's a reason why you're in Charlottesville, Virginia, I can tell.
There are people on the Romney side who are already making that very argument that having the mandate struck down is one of the greatest things politically that could happen to Romney because it'll prove his point.
Now, Romney has been attacked for having a health care bill that is said to be the blueprint for Obamacare.
And he's been asked about it.
And he said, wait a minute now.
The states can do every mandate in the world they want.
The federal government can't because of the Commerce Clause.
I would never do a national mandate.
I would never, ever, as president, do a national mandate.
But in the states, these laboratories, and people are saying, so if the court throws out Obama's mandate, that this proves Romney brilliant and exactly right.
I think it's a stretch, but they're going to play it that way.
You're exactly right.
I think it's a better argument than he's got so far, anyway.
Well, the theory is, the Romney people want to inoculate him from the tie to Obamacare.
And so the Obama mandate being thrown out while Romney stands will be said to mean that Romney knows what he's talking about.
He's right.
He can.
You can have a state mandate, but you can't have a national mandate.
And hope to score points on it that way.
And you think that would redound favorably to him?
I think it would help bolster his argument.
It doesn't seem to get a lot of traction now, but I think that could really solidify that argument for the problem.
You're right.
At the end of the day, nobody's going to ever be able to say Romney care is unconstitutional.
Right.
But they will be able to say Obamacare, not only unconstitutional, what that means it's illegal.
That's the word that needs to be used.
If they throw it out, unconstitutional is one thing, but I prefer the word illegal because they'll understand that wherever you go in this country.
Right.
Unconstitutional might confuse some of them, but illegal, they'll understand.
Well, there's another reason to hope this thing gets overturned, I guess.
Well, yeah, but I'm still struck that we're even here on this, but we are.
It's a reality, can't be denied.
But it's all everything happens for a reason.
And this, I said earlier this week, this is one of the greatest teachable moment opportunities ever to have happened since I have been behind the golden EIB microphone.
In that sense, it's a godsend.
Just like the NAGs said that I was a godsend, God's gift to women in a college.
I know they didn't intend it, but they said it.
By the way, the White House understands full well what's going on.
They have a press secretary there named Ernest, Josh Ernest.
And the regime is now referring to Obamacare as a bipartisan bill, and they're calling the individual mandate a Republican idea.
But the way they are rebranding the mandate is to call it Individual Responsibility Clause.
Josh Ernest said the Affordable Care Act is a bipartisan plan and one we think is constitutional.
The problem is it's not.
He's just making that up.
Bipartisan means members of both parties voted for it, and not one Republican voted for the Affordable Care Act on final passage.
Not one.
It barely eked through because they misled Bart Stupak when they told him that abortions would not be paid for in Obamacare, or abortions could be paid for, so are birth control pills.
So it was not bipartisan, and it was not a Republican idea.
But they are rebranding the individual mandate as individual responsibility, the individual responsibility clause.
Now, why are they doing that?
Well, it's very simple.
This is still a conservative country.
They know, despite their best efforts, they know that personal responsibility is still a foundation of this country.
And so they're trying to score points by using a term almost exclusively used by conservatives now, individual response.
Libs don't believe in individual responsibility.
All of a sudden, they do.
He views Express been a host on this program documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time.
I have been, over the course of the past month, and this is inside baseball stuff, but you people have been so terrific during this past month.
Normally, this question I wouldn't answer, but I'm going to answer it because I'm being peppered constantly.
What have your ratings been since that whole fluke thing happened?
Now, normally, I don't talk about them in specifics because in the ethics of the broadcast business, you don't do it.
You don't do anything that would artificially affect them.
And there are penalties if you get too specific about methodology and so forth.
It's enough to say, most listened-to radio talk show in the country ever, and unlike it ever be done.
That's enough to say.
But I'll just answer the question this way: In the past month, radio ratings are taken in many different ways.
They're broken down almost impossibly humorous ways.
I mean, you could, for example, if I wanted to, I could probably make the case that I have on the number one show among one-armed amputees at the corner of whatever and whatever in Soho on Friday afternoons in the third hour.
And if I wanted to make that claim, I'm sure I could find it in there.
But the simple answer is that on the range of all 600 radio stations, our ratings are up anywhere from 10 to 60%, depending on the station.
And that's as detailed as I'm going to get.
And what I mean by that, we could be up 33% on one station, 12% on another.
60% is the top that we're up on another.
We're up 50% in a number of places.
The advertisers who hung in here are going gangbusters.
Yes.
I mean, that's the simple, the only ones who got hurt are the ones who left.
And that's its own tragedy because they left under false, trumped-up, unreal pretenses.
I don't want to relive that.
I just wanted to answer the question without getting too specific because everybody's asking about it.
And it's a way of thanking you too.
Back to the phone.
Scott in McKay, Ohio.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hi, it's great to be talking to you and listening to your rush.
I called because you were just talking a little while ago about the New York Times is looking for who to blame after three days at the Supreme Court.
And I'm wondering if you think the left media is just going through the stages of grief because I hear Greg Sargent, or rather, I saw Greg Sargent in his online blog last night was saying They're not going to strike down the mandate because it will cause so many problems for the Congress if they do.
Not whether it's legal or unconstitutional, but just, you know, they'll do that because it would create a whole big mess.
Let me tell you what I think he's getting at.
And for those of you who don't, Greg Sargent used to be, I think this is the guy, used to be at a trade publication called Editor and Publisher.
He's now got a blog called a plumb line at the Washington Post website.
Right.
And he's pretty solid far left.
Well, I think, I think this is my point, Olwick, I think all of liberalism is in denial as a perpetual state of existence.
But on this specific case, let's go back to what the judge told me.
Let's go back to two things.
My judge buddy defines severability for me.
And we also had yesterday Scalia saying to the Associate Solicitor General, Do you expect us to go through these 2,700 pages here and determine what's constitutional?
Well, you expect us to do that?
You expect our clerks to do that?
You're worried about judicial excess, judicial authority, judicial overreach, and you're asking us to do this as the legislature's job, which takes us to Sargent's point.
Now, before I make it, let's go to the severability business.
What's different here in Obamacare is the individual mandate is the keystone of this bill.
It's the funding mechanism.
It is the transformational aspect.
It is that mandate, individual mandate, is what will forever change the relationship of citizen to government and vice versa, as Justice Kennedy pointed out.
This statue, you with me so far here, Scott?
I am.
Okay.
The statute is so long, 2,700 pages, so complicated, and it's all intertwined, one section to the next.
This thing is an intricately woven web that, to take the keystone out of it, does raise the question of, can the rest of it survive?
And it can't, because this is how largely it's paid for, and for a host of other reasons.
If you don't require, if you cannot require people to buy insurance, everything else in this falls by the wayside.
And I think Clement he I listened to the whole argument.
He argued that very ably yesterday.
Okay, so what what I think Sergent is saying is that uh, if the judges do that, the justices do that, what they end up sending back to Congress is so complicated and so unwieldy that they couldn't put it back together.
Is that basically his point?
Yeah, but then he goes on.
What he's saying though, is, and that's why they won't strike down the mandate.
So I think that's where the denial and the unreality.
I don't think that's going to.
Maybe for the lib judge, I?
I don't think.
No, I that that is wishful thinking.
The, the effect on Congress uh, will be the determining factor in whether or not a majority decides the bills.
That the mandate is constitutional no no, that's denial, wishful thinking, or what have you?
Um no no, I that that that's not going to be that it that's.
That's patently absurd.
Now they might.
I'm sure people on the left have got themselves in a situation where they believe that because, look at, they never would face reality.
They just are incapable of it.
They are in a state of shock.
They can't believe that anybody can look at this and see that it's unconstitutional.
And I can even put it in a better way.
They can't believe anybody would look at this and disagree with it.
This you ever wanted something so bad you can taste it.
You ever wanted something that just consumes you?
It's like, what is it in the Lord of the Rings?
Who was the bad guy that wanted the ring?
What was his name?
Zorin Sorin.
That's them.
They are like addicts.
They can't get their arms around the fact that reasonable people wouldn't want this.
They can't get their arms around the fact that people aren't embracing it and falling in love with it.
They do not understand the intellectual arguments, the judicial arguments opposing it.
They've never stopped to consider them.
They're beneath them.
Their arrogance and conceit is such that the opposition is disqualified simply because it opposes, not for why.
So I imagine a lot of them are clinging to some manufactured hope.
Like the judges will decide that the bill would be just too complicated for our poor Congress to have to deal with, and so they will not declare the mandate unconstitutional.
That's not going to happen.
They're going to declare this thing constitutional or not based on whether it's constitutional or not and not on the impact it has on Congress.
Now, there might be a couple of judges that reference this in order to have it on record.
It won't be the determining factor in their decision.
In fact, the way the libs are looking at this, some of them, if you listen to James Carville and a lot of others now, they've wanted this thing to fail from the get-go.
What is the best political opportunity Obama has ever had?
Well, my gumbo, that's right.
Because they think the mandate being found unconstitutional, i.e., illegal, is going to gin up their base.
They're going to come out and be as enthusiastic as they were in 2008.
Other libs are saying, hey, you know what?
If you find it unconstitutional, that's cool.
We just go straight, everybody's under Medicare now.
We'll just do single payer right now rather than tiptoe up to it in 10 years.
But they're all engaged in wishful thinking.
These are the people that are trying to tell us now that they win when they lose.
Okay, if that's true, let's make gasoline eight bucks and really send Obama racing back to re-election if that's how it works.
Okay, so where are the Democrats today on this?
What are they doing today?
Well, in a couple of instances, the left is today demanding that the Supreme Court cede to Congress.
Just don't do it.
Just don't do anything.
Let Obamacare stand.
Don't do anything.
It's Congress's job to which, well, whatever happened to judicial activism.
All of a sudden, now the Libs don't want the courts to do their dirty work.
They're scared to death that this mandate's going to be tossed out.
So the revenue from the mandate is the fuel of Obamacare.
And there isn't any alternative fuel.
There's no algae in the rest of the bill.
There isn't any windmills and no solar farms in the health care bill.
It's just the mandate is the only funding mechanism that there is.
You notice now how all of a sudden some on the left are demanding that the justices on the court butt out and cede to Congress and let it stand because it's too big a problem.
If you take something out and send it back to Congress, it's too unwieldy.
It's too much work.
And Congress can't do it.
No, no, just let it stand as it is.
That's the responsible thing to do.
The left telling judges not to meddle now.
I don't know.
I search interminably for the perfect way to describe these people that will forever explain them to everybody.
I know it's there.
I'll spend the rest of my life trying to find it.
It's a means of educating, persuading, informing just who these people are.
Let's go back to the phones.
This is Liz in Norfolk, Virginia.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
How are you today?
Very good.
Thank you.
My question is: you have four conservative supreme judges, you have four liberals, and you have one in the middle.
Why are they constantly saying these four are going to go this way, these four are going to go that way?
The Constitution is there for a reason.
Aren't they supposed to follow what the Constitution says, and their ideologue should not matter at any point?
Well, it bothers me.
That's been one thing that's been troubling me this whole time.
How long, Liz, have you been paying attention to matters of national affairs, politics, things like this?
When I started listening to you, which was, I guess, thanks to my husband, because I didn't like you at first when I first started listening to you, and I'm like, I'm not listening to Rush.
He's like, no, you need to listen.
You'll learn.
And so because of him, it's fun, say, seven to ten years or so, I've been listening.
Okay, that's, I mean, it's a long time, but it's, in other ways, not a long time.
Let me, I'm going to give you the simplest, most piercing answer to your question.
You got four libs in the court.
You've got four conservative, you've got one moderate.
Why don't they just look at the Constitution and decide, right?
That's your question?
Exactly.
Because the four on the left don't like it.
The four on the left would like to throw it out and rewrite it.
One of the four on the left is named Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
She went recently to Egypt to speak to some students there who want to write a constitution now that the Muslim Brotherhood's taken over Egypt.
And she said to them, do not use the U.S. Constitution as a model.
It's old, it's antiquated, and it's insufficient when it comes to human rights and civil rights.
She doesn't like it.
She will not defend it.
The other three libs on the court are pretty much the same.
They want to change it, and they do it in cases like this.
They ignore the Constitution and then write laws to change it so that whatever they say is constitutional is constitutional.
It really isn't any more complicated than that.
It may be hard to accept, but it's the truth.
They don't like it and they want to change it.
And that's wrong.
I just still can't wrap my brain around that because that's not why they're put there on the court.
Maybe they shouldn't have a lifetime.
No, it is exactly why they're put on the court.
No, no, no.
Liz, listen to me again.
Look at me.
That is exactly why they're put on the court.
They are not put on the court because they are profound thinkers.
They are not put on the court because they are reliably curious and robust intellectually, and because they are and have demonstrated an ability of superior judicial intellect and IQ.
They are put there as a vote, a reliable liberal vote.
Those four are on the Supreme Court because they will reliably vote the liberal interpretation of every case.
Elena Kagan doesn't have the slightest idea what she's doing.
She was nominated and confirmed for one reason.
She helped cheerlead Obamacare as a member of the administration.
She then prepared the defense of this law while she was the solicitor general.
For that reason alone, she should not be allowed to sit on this case.
She should be recused.
She should recuse herself.
She is there not to examine the case.
She is there not to find the truth.
And neither is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
And neither is Stephen Breyer.
They are not there to find the truth.
They are there to create a new one.
Their version, their view, they believe the Constitution is flawed.
They believe that it is a flawed and unjust document that needs to be thrown out.
Short of being thrown out, it needs to be altered, rewritten, and changed.
It is no more complicated than that.
I know you're having trouble getting your arms around it because you don't think that's American.
You think it's fully, totally American.
The Constitution is it.
Everybody embraces it.
Like the Declaration.
No, not these people.
They don't like it.
Look, folks, what this shows is what an incompetent, power-hungry president and former Democrat Majority of Congress we had and have.
There were a hundred ways to deal with health care.
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