Rush Limbaugh Program - May 22, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3

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May 22, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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May 22, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3

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	And it's our third hour together.
	Then we are done.
	We move on to the Wednesday Rush Limbaugh Show, which will actually be hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Rush Back from a Day of Charitable Enterprise.
	He'll share that with you tomorrow, details of where he was and what he did.
	Meanwhile, what we're going to do is tackle some more topics, talk about some things we haven't gotten to yet, some things which people are still on the line for at 1-800-282-2882, and maybe even a couple of things that haven't even occurred to me yet.
	But tops on the agenda here, I'm really excited to do this.
	If there's one of many mottos I try to live by, it's choose your heroes carefully.
	Always good advice.
	Choose your heroes carefully.
	Well, I try to, and here's one of mine.
	It is the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.
	They do a wonderful job sticking up for religious freedom in a tough environment.
	Hannah Smith is their senior counsel, and we're going to talk a little bit about HHS mandates and Obamacare, and maybe even a few other things because it's such a fertile field, this world of religious liberty.
	Hannah, it's a pleasure to have you.
	How are you?
	Thanks so much, Mark, for having me.
	It's great to be with you.
	I'm doing great.
	Thanks, Amelia.
	All right.
	Notre Dame is leading the charge.
	There's an explosion of new challenges to the HHS mandate.
	And for those who have sort of been paying half attention, there's a lot of negative attention that's been coming because a lot of employers, Catholic schools, Catholic hospitals, would be forced to offer contraception if Obamacare had the level of mandates that its crafters intend.
	So there's a battle in which some of these employers are saying, wait a minute, our religious freedom is violated if you make us do this.
	Tell me about Notre Dame.
	Tell me about some folks that you've worked with at the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty and how this battle is going.
	Sure.
	This battle actually started last November when we filed on behalf of Belmont Abbey College, which is a small liberal arts college in North Carolina that is run by monks.
	We filed on their behalf challenging this mandate in federal court in Washington, D.C.
	And since then, now to date, we have 23 cases that have been filed in 15 states, including the District of Columbia, on behalf of 55 plaintiffs.
	So beginning with that one case on behalf of Belmont Abbey, now we have this cascade of cases that has challenged this unconstitutional and unlawful mandate that would force these religious organizations to purchase these drugs and services against their conscience.
	So it's a really vital, critical issue at the juncture of religious liberty.
	I want you to help people out with something because any arguments we make about this, about constitutionality, need to not be based on whether we like or don't like Obamacare, whether we admire or don't admire the president's goals.
	If we say something's unconstitutional, it needs to be because it is unconstitutional.
	So, Counselor, if you would tell me why the HHS mandate is violative of our founding document.
	Well, the HHS mandate is unconstitutional and unlawful in so many different ways.
	What I think is really telling is that the HHS Secretary Sebelius herself has admitted under oath now before two different congressional committees when she's been up there answering questions from senators and congressmen that she did not consult constitutional precedents and that she didn't even ask for a legal memo from the Justice Department before making her decision on this mandate.
	So that's really amazing, an amazing admission on her part that despite the fact that they've made these various statements, that they've balanced all the interests and that they find this mandate to be constitutional, she actually admitted under oath that she never asked for advice from the Justice Department on whether in fact it's constitutional.
	Now, of course, it's unconstitutional.
	There are a variety of ways that it violates the First Amendment free exercise clause.
	It also violates a federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is a law that was actually championed by Teddy Kennedy and signed into law by Bill Clinton.
	So it's hardly a law of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
	And it actually protects religious exercise from the substantial burden of government.
	So it says to the federal government, you cannot substantially burden the religious exercise of a religious individual or entity.
	And here we have an amazing substantial burden on these religious groups.
	If a religious organization does not comply with this mandate, they would be forced to drop their health insurance and thereby incur a fine of $2,000 per employee, and that's just the first year, and those fines would increase in future years.
	That fine is tripling to many of these religious organizations who are on shoestring budgets as homeless shelters or soup kitchens or what have you.
	So this is definitely a substantial burden under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and we believe that these federal courts will agree with us on that point.
	Hannah Smith is here, and she's senior counsel for the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, and you can follow their exploits at Beckett, B-E-C-K-E-T, Beckettfund.org.
	Hannah, you mentioned just a moment ago, this is golden that you've done it.
	You invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
	This was 1993.
	It was the beginning years of Bill Clinton.
	Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer were all about this.
	And one of the main thrusts at that time, a lot of it had to do with Native Americans, some corners of whom were into the use of peyote as a sacrament or something like this.
	And the argument was that if American law runs afoul of some sincere religious wish, then maybe the law needs to relent a little bit.
	Which is an interesting two-sided sword because using that exact same argument, that is the argument you make in saying that the religious wishes of Catholics should be respected rather than trampled by the HHS mandate.
	Yeah, well, there was a 1990 opinion called Smith, Unemployment Division v. Smith, that actually said if a law is neutral and generally applicable, then this compelling governmental interest test doesn't apply.
	But there are ways in which Smith does not apply if a law is, for example, contains exemptions within it, individualized exemptions or categorical exemptions, meaning that it exempts a whole group of people from the application of that law, then the law is not generally applicable and that standard, that higher standard of a compelling governmental interest should apply.
	And here, I think we would argue under the First Amendment that there are a whole bunch of exemptions that have been granted to the Affordable Care Act.
	In fact, there is an exemption that permits any plan that is grandfathered to not be subject to this HHS mandate.
	And the estimates currently are that something like 100 million people will be grandfathered under the Affordable Care Act.
	And so if 100 million people are exempted from this application of this mandate, it's hard to say that this is a generally Applicable law that applies to everyone.
	So that's the first point.
	And then the second point is that RIFRA came along after the Smith decision to overturn Smith and, as a matter of federal law, say that we're going to reinstate this more advantageous test, the compelling governmental interest test, for religious individuals and institutions.
	So we have both claims in our lawsuit.
	We have a claim under the First Amendment.
	This is not a generally applicable law because of all of the waivers and exemptions that have been granted.
	And we also have a claim under RIFRA, which says that we should get this higher compelling governmental interest test that the government can in no way meet here.
	If I have you, and here you are as senior counsel for a great outfit like the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, and you're invoking all these wonderful things about religious freedom and the First Amendment, there's another story in my stack of stuff that I'd love to bounce off you in very broad terms because I'm intrigued by it and it's obviously right in your wheelhouse if you don't mind.
	Here we are in 2012, a campaign year, and there are going to be some preachers in some pulpits saying some things that are political.
	They always have, they always will.
	I want to know as an attorney who obviously cherishes and studies religious freedom, where do you think that line is drawn?
	There's a case out of Louisville where there's an Eastern Kentucky Baptist pastor who's not thrilled by President Obama's embrace of the equanimity of gay marriage and went to his flock and said, you know what?
	I want you to vote against this guy.
	And that made a lot of people freak out in 12 languages.
	Oh, preachers can't do that.
	Can they?
	Well, you know, that's a really, really important issue, and it's certainly one that the Beckett Fund is very concerned with.
	And, you know, we believe at the Beckett Fund that preachers should have just as much First Amendment protection in what they say over the pulpit as any individual does in this country.
	And so certainly we would not agree with the attempts by these very secularist groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and others that are going around the country trying to drum up these charges against preachers who talk about very significant moral issues of our time over the pulpit and indeed may have an opinion based on religious values and religious doctrine that impacts on important issues that are going to be put before the electorate during an election year.
	That's exactly my question.
	You know, we would definitely side with the preachers on this one and say they each have just as much First Amendment rights as anyone else.
	You bet.
	Now here's the even-handedness test.
	And if there is a preacher somewhere who, based on a religious argument as he sees fit, wishes to compel the electorate to vote for President Obama against Vice President Romney, I would surely disagree with that logic, but I would stick up for his rights to do it as well.
	Well, sure.
	I mean, we have to apply it even-handedly, and we have to say that people can preach according to the dictates of their own conscience, and they should be able to talk about moral issues on an election year.
	So, yeah, I would agree with that.
	And, you know, the important point to note here is that the Beckett Fund is not a partisan outfit.
	You know, we defend everyone's religious freedom.
	We're named after Thomas Beckett, who was a 12th-century priest who battled King Henry II of England over the rights and privileges of the church, and he was ultimately martyred for it.
	And so, you know, we represent everyone from A to Z, from Anglicans to Zoroastrians, as long as they're sincere believers.
	We don't care what your politics are.
	We don't care about partisan issues.
	We care about defending religious liberty.
	So go to Beckettfund.org, and you can find a great resource page on there about the HHS mandate cases and a whole bunch of other cases that we're litigating across the country right now.
	When I woke up this morning, I did not know that I would hear the word Zoroastrians spoken by guest caller or me on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Hannah, thank you very much, and continued congratulations.
	Keep fighting the good fight.
	We appreciate you a lot.
	Thanks so much, Mark.
	That is Hannah Smith, Senior Counsel for the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.
	And that is Beckett Fund, B-E-C-K-E-T-1-T-B-E-C-K-E-T, Beckettfund.org.
	All righty.
	Well, I wanted to ask her about that.
	And listen, I want to ask you about it, too, because here was this story.
	In fact, I won't tell the whole story.
	Just let's package this.
	When we come back, I'll tell you the story of Pastor Ronnie Spriggs of Hager Hill Free Will Baptist Church.
	And he had a little something on his mind May 13th, and you may agree with it, you may disagree with it, but I think he had the right to say it.
	So we'll see how political can pastors get.
	Should anybody go banging on the door and go, you can't be saying that, under what circumstances would you draw a line on what pastors can do from the pulpit when it invariably, as it will sometimes do, turn to politics.
	All right, we have that and everything else we've got cooking.
	Some 2012 talks, some Bain Capital talk, venture capital in general.
	A lot of other things we haven't even gotten into.
	Got 43 minutes left together.
	Let's make the most of them on these phone lines.
	It's 1-800-282-2882.
	Mark Davis in for Rush.
	Back in a moment.
	It is the Tuesday Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Rush will be back tomorrow.
	I'm Mark Davis filling in, making the flight up to Texas last night.
	Turnaround, going home today.
	Quick old turnaround.
	It's just a joy working here with Bo and Mike and Allie and everybody here at the EIB Northern Command.
	It's a joy.
	And as a matter of fact, since I live to serve in these little blips of opportunity here in the Rush substitute chair, I've mentioned following in the world of Twitter at Mark Davis, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S.
	And what I did right before the show is whipped out the iPhone.
	Why frog?
	I'm done.
	I've now established a YouTube channel.
	Don't ever give a child a toy he's not ready for, but I have a YouTube channel.
	And so it's like 21 seconds of me sitting in this chair, showing you the room through the window where Mike and Bo are, and the Greek salad that Allie went and got for me that I've now consumed.
	So if this is what you need to complete your day, there it is right there on Twitter at Mark Davis with more videos and other fun stuff to come.
	Stuff I write, things I do, things to hopefully delight and amaze you on the Twitter world at Mark Davis.
	Thank you very, very much.
	Appreciate it.
	And thanks for all of your calls today.
	They have been great.
	Let us head into Hanford, California.
	Donna, hi, Mark Davis in for Rush.
	How are you?
	Okay.
	I have been, you know, for me, the idea that Obama would dump Biden off the ticket this year has just been a foregone conclusion.
	Really?
	Because I think the reason he was put on it is, you know, in case he lost, you know, the racist white guy was a reason, because we know it couldn't be Obama's fault.
	But as for Hillary Clinton being on the ticket, I don't think so because now we've got two political piranhas, very smart ones too, in the Clintons.
	And they're not, see, she was safe being Secretary of State because she was out of the general mix of what was going on here.
	Right.
	But if she ties her name to Obama, when she runs in 2016, she's going to lose.
	Okay.
	Wow.
	You're giving me such material.
	Let me take one thing at a time.
	So you think that President Obama would be loath to pick Hillary?
	It sounded like you're suggesting that he would feel that she would be sort of sniping at his heels.
	No, no, no, no.
	She doesn't want to be connected to him because he's been a dismal failure.
	We don't want to taint herself being associated with him as far as domestic policy here is concerned.
	But do vice presidents always wear that stain?
	Because I mean, it isn't.
	So, I mean, okay.
	She is his Secretary of State right now and by far the most admired member of his cabinet.
	Maybe the only member of his, well, I don't want to be that unkind.
	I was going to say the only member of his cabinet who's genuinely qualified for the title.
	That after four years as his vice president, she would, her value would be diminished by proximity to him, you think?
	Yes.
	All right.
	That's fair.
	Let me go to the second thing that you gave me, which is a really interesting point.
	And this is something that Bo mentioned when we were talking about this during the news break.
	And that is that if you get, as has been the case since day one, if you get one Clinton, you get them both.
	I have a feeling Barack Obama gets tingly at the notion of running with Hillary because it may be the only way he can win, and she would help him win maybe comfortably.
	But with Hillary, you get Bill.
	And I deeply think, I think that Bill Clinton makes Barack Obama's teeth itch, and it might be mutual.
	I don't think these guys like each other very much.
	So that may be a negative.
	But don't you think that all that falls away if Barack Obama looks at Hillary and says, and if he looks real hard and real honestly at the situation, it may be the only way that he can win.
	Yeah, I think she will reject him, though.
	That's the point.
	She will reject him.
	She does not want to be tied to him for her bid in 2016.
	But then we come to the second part of my point: that Obama still owes some debt for the 2008 support, and a lot of it is to the Kennedy family because they're not happy.
	You know, the Kennedys don't play well with others.
	And when they don't get their way, they get really mad.
	So he's going to have to do something to bring them back, bring their money back, bring their support back.
	So I think he just might put Robert Kennedy Jr.
	Not after the last couple of weeks.
	I don't know.
	He owns them.
	Well, first of all, you said...
	They're not going to support him if he doesn't do something for them.
	No.
	No, yeah, okay.
	Wow.
	But that just might be a little name that's a little too hot to handle these days.
	But wonderful analysis and entertaining stuff and thoughtful stuff.
	Donna, thank you very, very much.
	Okay.
	All right.
	The lady gives us a couple of premises.
	If the Hillary's interest in the vice presidency is probably negligible, and I don't blame her for this.
	This is probably true of most politically ambitious people.
	What they really want is the presidency.
	So you look at every single possible move and ask yourself, does this help me win the presidency or does it not?
	The lady's point is, a term as Barack Obama's vice president, not so much.
	But if she leaves and just goes off and writes books and does speaking engagements and stuff and then comes back and runs in 2016, because the Democrats will be wide open in 2016, no matter what, because they'll either be running to fill the Barack Obama eight years and now vacancy, or they'll be running against incumbent Mitt Romney.
	Now, Hillary is 64.
	She would then be 68.
	Women outlive men.
	I mean, you know, that doesn't seem to be a big issue.
	Hmm.
	I'm going to weigh that one a little bit because if you are Hillary, if you are Hillary, and the only thing left for you is the presidency, that's a fantastic point.
	Because there's a part of me that says if you can ride out the vice presidency, do it.
	I'm taking back to what, was it John McCain's line originally?
	The vice president essentially has two functions.
	Number one, attend the funerals of foreign dignitaries.
	And number two, inquire daily as to the health of the president.
	If Hillary were vice president, and we get four more years of Obama that everybody just hates more, thus we got exactly what we deserved.
	How much of that stain attaches to her?
	I don't know.
	The one thing the vice president does have to do is be right in lockstep with the president, and she may not want to do that at all.
	Of course, has Joe Biden ever lived by that standard?
	Oh, heavens.
	Great stuff.
	All right, Mark Davis, in for rush.
	We'll be back on the phones with you in just a moment.
	It is the home stretch.
	Little James Brown.
	Very special to me.
	Boy, if we're going to invoke pop culture, every time I'm here, we're fresh on the heels of we're in the midst of a big pop culture death.
	Two times back was Dick Clark.
	One time back was Donald Duck Dunn of Booker T and the MGs, just great Memphis musician.
	And now, just a couple of couple of days ago, Robin Gibb.
	And this one was hard, not just because that's my total wheelhouse.
	And I mean both wheelhouses, not just, you know, I'm 54, all right?
	So Saturday Night Fever was like my sophomore junior year of college.
	But the here's, well, first of all, the thing that made that tough was remember the story just not long ago.
	And in fact, I think I'd mentioned at the time of Dick Clark's passing that these are just tough times, you know, for pop culture losses because Robin Gibb was just, you know, teetering on the edge of the Great Beyond.
	And then a couple of days later, he wakes up from a coma.
	Boom.
	It's like, wow.
	And maybe, I don't know if I just expected him to suddenly live another 15 more years, but the illness got him again, and he passed away just a couple of years ago.
	Now, here's what drove me insane.
	All right.
	All the headlines.
	Disco's Robin Gibb remembered as dot dot dot or disco this or disco that.
	Now, let's stipulate.
	If you're my age and a white man, or maybe what maybe there's nothing even if you're a 54-year-old white guy and you're walking around in 75, 76, 77, 78, you're probably working from the Journey, Foreigner, Rush, Styx, Ted Nugent, Fog Hat Realm.
	And the very sound of the Andrea True Connection singing more, more, more was kryptonite to the depth of your soul.
	All right.
	Saturday Night Fever was an amazing body of work, but if you walked around and suggested that you actually enjoyed this, it is the stuff of stairwell beatings.
	Now, time broadens our thoughts, and I appreciate the entire Bee Gee's catalog from Staying Alive to Night Fever, How Deep Is Your Love.
	But the thing that made me crazy is as people look back on the career of Robin Gibb, and I guess that's where the record sales came from.
	I guess he sold a lot more, you know, as a disco artist than he did before.
	But this, hey, disco's Robin Gibb passes away at da-da-da-da-da, that gives the back of the hand to Robin Gibb and Barry and Morris Gibbs' previous decade of greatness from Robin's own vocal on I Started a Joke to New York Mining Disaster to How Do You Mend a Broken Heart to just some of the most some of the greatest records of the 60s and early 70s.
	So it was an just so from all of that put together, don't sell Robin Gibb short by pigeonholing him as a disco artist, okay?
	Even though that was great stuff, admittedly, and it was just an amazing guy.
	And so Barry, pretty well the only one left at this point.
	Speaking of big groups, speaking of big groups, few of whom are left alive, I watched something on the plane here.
	It was on HBO and I missed it completely.
	Martin Scorsese, right?
	His documentary about George Harrison, living in the material world.
	Excellent.
	I mean, it is so very good.
	I mean, it goes way back to the skiffle days.
	I mean, to the way when he first met Lennon and McCartney and before that.
	And I'm about halfway through it, which means he's hanging out with Ravi Shankar every day, trying to weave sitar sounds into everything he's doing.
	And they're recording All Things Must Pass around 1970 with the exceedingly bizarre Phil Specter.
	It is just really, really cool.
	So if you look for something to blow money on iTunes, it's Living in the Material World, the Scorsese documentary about George Harrison.
	Very, very cool.
	Yes, I'm halfway through it.
	I'll knock down the other half.
	Oh, is there more to come?
	All righty.
	I'll knock down the other half on the plane in about five or six hours.
	So, woohoo, there we go.
	Okay, I live to serve.
	Now, how about shut up and take some calls, substitute boy?
	Let's do it.
	We're in Miami.
	Juan, hey, Mark Davis in for Rush, how are you doing?
	Hi, Mark.
	As a previous caller explained, venture capital is banking of last resort for struggling corporations.
	It's that simple.
	Obama criticizes venture capital.
	Now, the question that Romney should ask is: what has Obama in his four years as president offered as an alternative to venture capital?
	Absolutely right.
	Exactly right.
	And this is another great bit of advice if Romney's folks are listening, and I trust they are, even when the substitute guy is here, because it's a lot of heartfelt thoughts from people who say this is what we want our nominee to do and to say.
	It's like, if you're going to come at me with criticism about my management of money and my vision of how money should go in a free market, how about your vision of how money should go?
	Sucked into the rat hole of expansionist collectivist government.
	I'll put my record up against yours anytime, Mr. President.
	I think maybe Governor Romney needs to find a more delicate way to phrase that, but I think your idea is spot on.
	Thank you, sir.
	Thank you, Juan.
	Appreciate it very much.
	We are in Salt Lake City.
	Hi, Aaron.
	Mark Davis in for Rush.
	How are you?
	Aaron, how are you?
	Great.
	Good.
	Going back to religious leaders talking politics, my thought on that is: if religious leaders aren't allowed to talk politics in their churches, then neither should celebrities who have even larger audiences listening and following what they say.
	Well, I achieve consistency by saying let everybody say what you wish and just agree and disagree and everybody get on with their lives.
	There's a special argument, though.
	I'll tell you where the argument comes from, and you can agree or disagree.
	But the notion is sparked by the following, that a preacher in a pulpit, that a clergyman, a man or woman of the cloth, is a little different than Oprah or Bruce Springsteen or Meryl Streep spouting off because they are involved in a specifically religious exercise that is exempt from taxes, creating that sort of church-state separation thing that people either love or hate, depending on the situation.
	And the argument has gone that if we're, hey, churches, since we don't make you pay taxes, you need to stay out of politics.
	That's the way the logic has gone.
	I've never found it to be logical.
	I've always found that to be an absolute disaster.
	I believe that if a preacher of any faith has a moral thought in his head that has a political angle, he is free to share it, whether I agree with it or not, whether it's a liberal view or a conservative view, and let the folks in the congregation either like it and remain in that church or dislike it and find the door.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	That'd be my thought.
	All righty.
	Aaron, thank you.
	Appreciate it very much.
	1-800-282-2882.
	Let's go across the river, shall we?
	We're in Brooklyn.
	Jimmy, Mark Davis in Farush, how are you doing?
	You're doing a great job filling in.
	A lot of people don't realize just how far left Hillary Clinton is.
	I mean, she actually wrote her thesis on that Marxist street strategist, Solovinsky.
	I have a copy of it.
	It's amazing how brilliant and how much she thinks Sola Ninski is a great guy.
	Okay.
	Let's say one thing at a time, one thing at a time, because, okay, that's fine.
	It's fine.
	It's fine.
	And here's the interesting thing about wrapping Sololinsky around somebody, because Lord knows Newt would have loved to have done that with Barack Obama at every single presidential debate.
	And I don't know how much good it would have done.
	It would have been true, would have been lovely.
	I don't know how much good it would have done.
	Here's the question.
	If somebody held a radical view 40 years ago, do they hold it still?
	In the case of President Obama, the evidence is ample that he still does.
	All right?
	You know, and I wasn't kidding so very, very much when I said after three years of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton looks like Margaret Thatcher.
	And I don't know how much we can wrap Mr. Alinsky around Hillary at the age of 64.
	Well, there's also a Dr. Quinton Young who spread the rumor, helped work with the rumor that the U.S. used biological weapons in the Korean War.
	Dr. Quinton Young was an advisor on Hillary Clinton's task force.
	So she's still in.
	And when Bill Clinton was president, when he brought on all these radical Marxists like Janeta Cole, everybody like that, or the transition team, those were all Hillary Clinton's suggestions.
	So she may have a cleaner, clearer, better image than Obama, but she's just as far left.
	I mean, you go back to the governor's schools in Arkansas.
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	As soon as you start a sentence, you got to go back.
	The first thing that occurs to me is maybe you don't because voters aren't going to want to go with you.
	I mean, they're just most, a lot of folks are just going to go, dude, you're telling me stories from the 1960s here, please.
	Especially if there's evidence that someone has mitigated and moderated their views to some degree.
	Now, Hillary Clinton is no conservative, please.
	Absolutely not.
	But she certainly is to the right of Obama on at least a few important issues and would be, I believe, a more palatable running mate than Joe Biden and a more palatable president.
	I mean, we're not so far past the idea that some people add that she ought to just go ahead and run for president, challenge President Obama in the primaries these last few months and just have the Hillary Clinton I Told You So tour 2012, which may well have been successful.
	Who think that Hillary would probably help Obama if she ran for vice president?
	I was just pointing out her true left-wing leadership.
	I understand.
	And that is of value.
	And I appreciate it, Jimmy.
	Thank you.
	The way to sort of filter that through the sieve of 2012 is as follows.
	If you have somebody who has some stuff in their past, the key question is, how much of that still properly hangs off of them today?
	I mean, would you want to be judged by everybody you were hanging out with when you were 22?
	And I don't mean that as a get-out-jail free card for everybody or as an excuse for everything.
	But if, like the president, you are still walking around saying things and still walking around holding views and still walking around displaying behaviors that show you to be as radical as you were when you were in college or shortly thereafter.
	Well, that's one thing.
	In general, I'll close this segment with the following observation.
	I think it's true.
	If you don't, you got 16 minutes to call me on it.
	I think everybody is just about done with, hey, here's what person acts.
	I mean, agree, disagree, Republican, Democrat, whatever.
	Hey, let's make a big deal out of something somebody did decades ago.
	Hey, let's bring up all this stuff and find these documents and find this stuff.
	And I'm not talking birth certificate necessarily or college transcripts necessarily or college papers or whatever.
	I'm not picking on any of that.
	I am as interested in all of that as anybody.
	I'm just making an observation about the electorate.
	And I think the electorate doesn't give two flips about stuff like that anymore.
	What they care about is what are you going to do the minute you are president of the United States?
	What is the recent evidence of ideas in your head that you will bring to the presidency now and in the future?
	Not what and whom were you jacking around with during the Johnson administration.
	Just saying.
	Mark Davis in for Rush.
	Be right back.
	It is the closing segments of the Tuesday Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Rush is back tomorrow.
	Mark Davis filling in.
	When we spoke to a lady from the Beckett Institute for Religious Liberty, I'd mentioned a story out of eastern Kentucky.
	Let me give you the particulars on that.
	Pastor Ronnie Spriggs of Hager Hill Free Will Baptist Church, May 13th sermon.
	He said he wants Obama voted out of office because of the president's support of gay marriage.
	This is not just Pastor Spriggs deciding to launch a political vendetta since he's got some podium time on a Sunday.
	This is biblically based.
	Obama, quote, said that he believes that gays ought to have the right to marry in the United States.
	That's the president of the United States who said that.
	I don't know about you folks, but I'm going on record and I don't care who knows it.
	I want the guy out.
	The statements elicited cheers from the flock and supporting shouts of amen.
	But over at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, they said that Reverend Spriggs' comments violate a federal law that said that tax-exempt churches should not oppose a candidate.
	This has always struck me as crazy.
	And again, the even-handedness test: if some pastor somewhere wants to craft a religious reason to vote for Obama, knock yourself out, go do it.
	And the liberty angle works as follows: everybody in that congregation is free to either absorb that message, love it, and stick around, or be repelled by that marriage and get the heck out of there.
	That's what liberty looks like.
	It's what liberty looks like.
	We are in North Plainfield, New Jersey.
	Tom, Mark Davis in for Rush.
	How are you doing?
	Peter, how are you?
	I'm very frustrated as a Republican out here.
	And let me just explain to you why.
	This attack with Bain, as far as Mitt Romney with Bain, the bottom line is this: we need to at least acknowledge it and shoot back.
	When you look at what Obama has done, let's just use GM as the example.
	How many billions of dollars are still owed, number one?
	Number two, how many dealerships were closed?
	Number three, did in fact GM end up in bankruptcy, which is what Mr. Romney had called for in the beginning.
	And nobody's talking.
	Why doesn't the Republican Party go out and find those people who worked for those dealerships and put them into an ad to rebut this and put an end to the garbage?
	And then you could even go one step further.
	And that's when you use the Solyndra, which is government money, which is our tax dollars, which were used to prop those his friends up and so on and so forth in those corporations.
	Hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, whatever it is.
	And then those people are now unemployed.
	Put those people into an ad.
	Let them tell us what happened and why, you know, why it just doesn't make any sense to me.
	Tom, I'm going to tell you something.
	For being perplexed and frustrated and in a hand-wringing fit, you've given us clarity and value, as have so many other people today.
	If the Romney folks are listening, and I hope that they are, there have been more than a dozen people, and I'm not even talking about me.
	I just walk in, sit down, and talk about stuff.
	Callers who are venture capitalists, callers who are versed in various portions of life's path, are offering up some magnificent ideas for the sort of tact that Governor Romney needs to take.
	And almost after every single one of these calls, there's something that occurs to me as a line or two that boils it down.
	And for this gentleman right there in New Jersey, it occurs to me this way: that Governor Romney's position needs to be: hey, I did a better job with private sector money than President Obama did with taxpayer money.
	It is the marketplace that should choose winners and losers and not government.
	How tough is that?
	I mean, I think that's a golden message.
	I think it resonates.
	I think it works.
	You don't have to go into any 500-page dissertation on what venture capital does that'll make everybody's eyes glaze over.
	And I think it's a winner with independent voters.
	Just me, just saying.
	All righty, 1-800-282-2882.
	Let's see what we have time for in the final segment because that is the one that is next.
	And that means that Rush is back tomorrow after just a couple more minutes of me.
	So let me share a couple of things with you on the other side, and then we'll conclude here on the EIB network.
	If I can wrap up with one big space dork moment, congratulations to the folks at SpaceX and that Falcon 9 launch vehicle taking a payload up to the International Space Station.
	Now let's take some human beings, man.
	Let's go.
	Let's get some people into Earth orbit.
	Let's do it.
	Okay, I'm done.
	Quite literally done.
	And Rush is back tomorrow.
	And once again, I've gotten the honor of doing this a lot lately, thanking Bo and Mike and Allie and all the people who make this just such an incredible joy.
	And thanks particularly to Rush for just letting me do it.
	And thanks to you for enduring me.
	Rush is back tomorrow.
	God bless our country and our troops.
	And I hope to see you all again very, very soon.
	Take it easy.

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