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July 2, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
July 2, 2012, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 Podcast.
John Roberts, the Rodney King of Chief Justices.
Can't we all just get along?
Except Chief Justice Roberts didn't drown in his swimming pool, as Rodney King did.
No, no, I'm not in a bad mood.
I just my MacBook Pros, the retinas, I ordered a bunch of them.
They've been in a warehouse at UPS in Louis since Saturday.
Supposed to be delivered today by 10 30.
Still says that in the tracking.
They're not, they're still stuck in a Louisville.
I was like, why is Apple holding these things?
I mean, the release dates come and gone.
Anyway, folks, great to have you here.
How are you?
It's EIB network in L Rushball behind the golden EIB microphone.
Telephone number is 800 28282, the email address L Rushball at EIB net.com.
Are you happy if you're in D.C., if you're in a DC area, are you happy you don't have an electric car?
Yeah, with the power outages, are you happy you don't have an electric car?
Because two what do you 2 million, 5 million, 3 million?
Whatever.
Aren't you glad you don't have an electric car?
By the way, how those windmills working out for you?
How the windmills and solar panels working out?
Is it running your air conditioning for you?
As you sit there and sweat away, how things doing in a nation's capital?
Well, those windmills are really working out, huh?
Solar panels?
Yeah, man, that's the future.
There you are, sitting there sweating, stinking like a stuck pig for three days, and it's gonna be this way for another week, and good thing you don't have an electric car, or you couldn't get around.
You couldn't escape.
Isn't it amazing?
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not kidding.
DC area power outages after storm could last for days.
I wonder how many people have solar panels on their homes are wondering why isn't their air conditioning working?
Well, seriously.
All this and now, of course, global warming is back.
Forget the fact that it hadn't been hot like this in ten years.
Global warming is back.
So every day, every day got to show up here and beat something back.
Every day well, yeah, okay, maybe it could be customs holding.
That's right.
The MacBook Pro retinas came from uh came from Shanghai.
But they've been there.
I mean, they still have the delivery data's today at 1030, so it still says on schedule.
Why don't they change that?
You know, I went deeper down their tracking website and uh clicked on the tracking numbers, all five of them, and it's being held in a warehouse.
So um, yeah, I thought maybe it was, I thought maybe Apple was waiting to make sure that they're all because this is the delayed model.
And I thought they were waiting to make sure they're all distributed at the same time, but customs probably does make um more saying how many how many windmills would have been destroyed by that land hurricane?
I'm just sitting here wondering.
How many how many windmills would still be standing if they were there and that land hurricane with 90 mile an hour winds that came along there?
Didn't phase Tiger Woods, though.
Tiger winds at Congressional in the heat and the humidity.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, uh on Friday.
When I opened the program, I told you I felt sick.
And I spent the next two hours explaining why I felt sick.
Today, I'm scared.
I'm a combination of angry and scared.
Because if this CBS report from Jan Crawford is accurate, and I happen to believe that it is.
I'll just she cites two sources, she doesn't name them.
But I happen to believe that her report is true.
Well, basically her report is let me summarize it for you.
That the Chief Justice did indeed cave to left wing media pressure.
Roberts originally voted, and by the way, this does lend credence to the notion that Obama was told.
Explain how.
Originally, Roberts voted with the other conservatives to strike down the mandate and pretty much the whole bill.
Then, and that was in uh March, April, that was early on.
Roberts voted with the conservatives to get rid of the whole thing for the most part, certainly the mandate.
Shortly after that, Obama and the media go on a tear about Roberts, specifically Roberts, and they go on a tear about the court in general.
And they start this horror story about how the court will be destroyed forever, and it's integrity will be blown forever if they overturn major landmark legislation and sitting president of the first black president, blah blah blah, all of that stuff.
And then Roberts changes his vote.
And for a month, you hear this, Don?
For a month, Anthony Kennedy tried to get him to change his mind.
Anthony Kennedy did everything he could.
Anthony Kennedy, say what you want about him being the swing vote.
One thing you can deduce from from many of Kennedy's decisions, where he has written either the uh the uh uh majority opinion or the dissent is that he is totally devoted to individual freedom and liberty, and in that sense, this this whole thing could not stand.
So he spends a month trying to twist Robert's arm and to no avail, and then Roberts, after a month, starts working on Kennedy to join him to make this 6-3.
Roberts change of fact the conservatives, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Scalia, found Roberts' reasoning so flawed that they refused to join or even acknowledge his opinion, even in the areas where they agreed.
That is why in their dissent, they didn't even mention Roberts.
They were so ticked off at what he had done.
They were so ticked off at the way he was changing his vote that they didn't even acknowledge his opinion in their dissent.
Some thought that meant that theirs was originally a majority opinion.
The story is no, they were just mad.
They didn't even want to acknowledge his existence in their dissent.
Jan Crawford CBS also reported that Roberts' change of heart was almost certain to have been driven by left-wing media anger around the possibility the law would be overturned.
Roberts reads the papers, very concerned about the court's image, she reports.
If that's true, folks, do you know what it means?
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is now run by the American media.
And that's why they are happy.
If you've noticed giddiness in the media, they're not talking about Jan Greenberg's report, folks.
You have to look long and far and wide to find mainstream coverage, analysis of commentary on her report.
But they are giddy and they are happy, and it's not just that the whole thing was upheld for the most part.
It is that according to this report, they did it.
Now, Justice Roberts is going to be the chief justice for 20 years.
I don't know what in the world this says about the integrity of the court, or whatever he was worried about, in terms of the court having lost its integrity appearing political if he had voted to overturn the bill.
He could not have done something that would have more damage the court's integrity than this, if this is true.
Because now the American, the Washington New York media runs the Supreme Court of the United States.
They run the chief justice.
They can intimidate, and they did.
I saw this, I said, How far could I have gone if I cared what was said about me?
All these years, if I cared what was said about me, and I decided to change my core beliefs in order to avoid the criticism to get praised, but how far would I be along now?
I'd probably be a movie star.
There'd be TV shows about me.
But I have never, well, not never.
Took me four years to come to grips with all of that, how to react to it, how to respond to it.
And now I don't give people the power to offend me or worry about what's said about me.
But apparently, according to Jan Greenberg at CBS, that's what did it.
And Chief Justice Roberts tried to lobby Kennedy to join him and leave the other conservatives so that this would end up being 6'3 and look even better for the court.
Kennedy refused.
The conservative dissent was not originally written as a majority opinion, as some have speculated, but reads strangely because the conservatives refused to acknowledge Robert's opinion.
So if Jan Crawford at CBS, if she's right about this, then at least one conservative justice that we know of can be blackmailed in a manner of speaking.
And she says, Robert's change of heart was almost certain to have been driven by left-wing media and it's an incompetent opinion.
It is incompetent, it is rewritten, it is it's it's outrageous.
This opinion is disastrous.
And I'm I'm still marveling.
I'm I'm I'm reading some of the analysis by the conservative media intelligence looking for a silver lining here, a silver lining there, praising Roberts for being a political mastermind setting all this up, the people have to decide, people are the ones have to make big decisions like this.
What happened?
What happened to the reason he's there?
What happened to the reason the court exists from Marbury versus Madison on?
Basically, the court is now confirmed to be a political institution that bends and shapes according to media pressure, just like a lot of Republicans and conservatives can be made to bend and shape according to media pressure.
This is, this is, this is, I can't tell you how troubling this is.
I'm still a little sick about it, but more than that, I'm just, I'm just flat out angry.
It comes down to the fact that we've got to win the house.
We have to win the Senate, we have to win the White House, and after we do that, the people that win have got to be committed to getting rid of this.
I'm not gonna lie to you, what we face to get rid of this, and we must is daunting.
When's the last entitlement you can think of ever been thrown away?
That's right.
The answer to the question is when's the last entitlement was thrown away is what's the first one.
And once people get entitlements, this thing doesn't fully implement till 2014.
So all the horror stories that we have to tell about this, people aren't gonna see it.
It doesn't, every horror story, every true like Steve Moore, who is editorial writer, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, said on TV over the weekend and this morning on Fox, he's looked into this and the CBO numbers and everything.
He said that 75% of all these new taxes are going to be paid by people who make 125,000 or less.
Not 200,000 or more are going to pay all the taxes, but 125,000 or less will pay 75%.
Well, that's all well and good, except that's not going to happen until 2014 or 2015.
So this summer and going into the fall, we got to tell everybody you make less than under 25,000 a year, your taxes are gonna be not gonna see it.
Meanwhile, the benefits start kicking in.
And you can look at you can look at Europe.
Once people have entitlements, they don't like giving them up.
Look at Greece.
Look at Spain.
Look at wherever.
They don't like giving them up.
Look at Stockton, California.
We have American cities that are being boarded up because people don't want to give it up.
They don't want to give it away.
They don't want to give it back.
Crawford in this CBS story sources it this is this quote at least one conservative justice tried to get Roberts to explain his change of position, but he was unsatisfied with Roberts' response, which is peculiar.
Why would it be hard for Roberts to explain his change of view if he had.
I'll tell you something else about this, if this is true.
And again, I'm to tell you that based on the way she wrote this, I think most of it is.
This stuff doesn't normally happen.
These judges don't talk to each other, they don't twist each other's arms, they don't debate, they don't argue.
I asked a justice once, and no, it's not Clarence Thomas.
I asked a justice once.
Okay, you go in there and vote and you guys debate.
Oh, oh, what do you mean debate?
Well, I mean, you try to change their mind.
I'm not gonna change their mind.
They're not gonna change their mind when he's talking about the libs of the court.
I'm not gonna this stuff doesn't happen.
The stuff that she said happened regarding Roberts and the four conservatives and all this arm twisting and debating back from normally doesn't happen.
So there was quite a lot that was uh unique about this.
But I don't I uh this silver lining?
Somebody show me the silver lining of the Titanic sinking.
What, there hadn't been one since?
What's the silver lining?
We got a movie out of it with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslow.
What's the what's the silver lining out of the Titanic?
We got a big, big task ahead of us.
Kennedy himself was the last justice known, now known to have changed his mind, and that during deliberations, and that was um uh a Roe v.
Wade case back in 1992.
Anyway, I had to take a brief time out.
There's another thing.
Pelosi, the Democrats do not want this call to tax.
It is a tax.
That's how it's freaking law is that it's a tax on what you don't do.
It is just outrageously incompetent.
In fact, John Eastman, one of the lawyers involved with it, he was on um Hannity Friday now.
We got the tape coming.
He thinks Roberts ought to resign over this.
It's so incompetent.
Anyway, now Pelosi and the Democrats are all of a sudden talking about free riders.
Their whole party is devoted to creating free loaders and free riders, and now they're out there ripping into them over this.
I have to take a break.
I'm gonna regain my composure.
I'm gonna find out what's happening to my MacBook Pro retina displays, and we'll be back.
Rush Limbaugh on Independence Day week.
It is a thrill and a delight to be with you.
Jan Greenberg at CBS says that her sources told her that uh Chief Justice Roberts went wobbly back in May, which is when there were countless news articles warning of damage to the court and to Roberts' reputation if they struck down the mandate.
And when leading politicians, including Obama, were warning the court not to strike down the law.
She says that that's what her sources told her is when Roberts started going wobbly.
She said that word of Robert's unusual shift has spread widely within the court, is known among law clerks, chambers' aides and secretaries.
It also stirred the ire of the conservative justices who believed Roberts was standing with them.
Her sources also say there was a month long desperate campaign to bring Roberts back to his original position led by Justice Kennedy.
But Roberts held firm.
And again, at least one justice tried to get Roberts to explain his change of position, but he was unsatisfied with what Roberts said.
Which is peculiar.
Why would it be hard for Roberts to explain his change of view?
If it was legitimate.
If it was legitimate.
Well, it used to be Jan Crawford Greenberg, and she dropped the Greenberg, but I still think of her as Greenberg, so I guess she just goes by Crawford now.
Jan Crawford is the CBS info baby.
It's used to be at ABC, I believe.
Anyway, got some audio sound bites on all this coming up, so sit tight.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, truth detector, doctor of democracy all combined as one harmless lovable fuzzball.
Let's go to Nancy Pelosi.
This is um yesterday on Meet the Press, David Gregory, said to the extent that you uh believe others believe Supreme Court has conferred an extra level of legitimacy on Obama tax.
The reality is that the court also said that the act is in effect a tax.
That the individual mandate requiring a people who can buy insurance is a tax.
Won't that make it more difficult to sell the popularity of this program to the American people?
Who is the penalty on?
The penalty is on people who uh have the wherewithal but refuse to buy health insurance, figuring they won't be sick, and if they do, other people will have to cover it.
Uh so these free riders, as they were identified by Governor Romney himself, he said people have the ability to pay and don't uh can't expect to be free riders.
And I think that he turned it exactly right.
These free riders make health insurance for those who are taking responsibility, making it more expensive.
Personal responsibility is a principle of our country.
Conservatives claim it, progressives claim it, liberals claim it, we all claim it.
What a crock.
She is asking us to swallow now.
One more sound bite.
We have uh I guess this looks like a mon no uh.
Well, she just she's adamant here that uh it's it's only a penalty on the free riders, still here with David Gregory on Meet the Depressed.
The president was adamant saying the individual mandate is not a tax.
Well, in fact, his own solicitor general went to went to the Supreme Court and said this is constitutional under the taxing authority of Congress.
That's right.
So that's not how this was sold to the American.
But this is not how it was sold to the American people.
No, it's a penalty.
It's a penalty that comes under the tax code for the one percent perhaps of the population who may decide that they're going to be free riders.
But most people are not a good thing.
No, no.
It's not a tax on the American people.
It's a tax, it's a penalty for free riders.
All right.
I I've not had all this I can have free riders.
A penalty for free riders.
What an attitude shift is this toward the uninsured.
What an about face this is.
Pelosi, the Democrats are pushing for Obamacare back in 2009 and 2010, and they were bombarding us with heartbreaking stories about the 30 to 50 million people who had to go without health insurance.
And they weren't free riders, they were victims.
They were victims of a mean country.
Victims of the rich.
Victims of corporations, victims of small businesses.
They were victims of the one percent.
We were even told that forty-five thousand people die every year because they couldn't get health insurance, and all of a sudden, they're a bunch of freeloaders.
Now all of a sudden, since the Supreme Court ruling has come out and made this effectively Obama tax instead of Obamacare.
Now they're free riders.
This is the party that celebrates free riders.
This is the party that devotes itself to creating even more free riders.
This is a party that could not survive without free riders and free loaders.
This is a party that does everything it can to make people as dependent as possible on the government.
Free riders, free loaders.
And now this ruling is apparently so distasteful that the Democrat Party has to do a 180 and start attacking their own voters.
Well, what happened to the precious 30 to 50 million uninsured?
This is the PS.
Democrats like Nancy Pelosi mocking free writers.
Isn't the entire mission of the Democrat Party to create more and more free riders?
Haven't they seen to it that almost half the country doesn't pay income tax?
A bunch of free riders.
Isn't their goal to get more and more people dependent on the government?
Didn't they spend millions advertising for more people to take free handouts from the government?
Isn't there a big advertising campaign on right now to expand the scope of food stamps to the food free riders?
Hellsbells, folks, the Democrat Party is the free rider party.
How do you say free riders in Spanish?
Joe Muniz, up in our soundbite central.
Joe, I want you to write for me.
I want you to send me an email or a text.
Send me a phonetic spelling of free writer in Espanol.
Well guess what?
That's what Obama cares all about now.
Punishing the free riders.
It's just you evil people who can pay, but you don't.
And you go to the emergency room when you get sick.
Or you what the hell is is insuring pre-existing conditions if it's not a bunch of free riders.
According to their definition, everybody with a pre-existing condition, and now with Obama tax, you know what?
You don't have to have insurance.
In fact, we're not even talking about insurance anymore.
If pre-existing conditions are now mandated to be treated, covered.
Then you don't buy insurance, you don't have any, you pay a little nominal fine as a free rider.
And then all of a sudden you're diagnosed with a terminal disease or something close to it, so you show up, and you now have to be granted insurance.
You well, you're free riding.
According to Nancy Pelosi of Democratic Party, you who have pre-existing conditions, who don't want to get insurance until the pre-existing condition becomes something really bad, you're not a bunch of free riders.
when the party that creates them invents them and Lives off of them.
What a bastardized thing we have ended up with here.
And it is a tax, and worse than that, it's a precedent setting tax on what you do not do.
Now all these people talking about on our side, all the conservative intelligence, hey, wait a minute, we got a diamond in the roof here, Rush.
We got a silver lining here.
Do you see what Robert said about the commerce clause?
Congress can't use a commerce clause.
He didn't say that.
And we had a former lawyer call here on Friday, and others have written extensively on this too.
Roberts was writing for himself when he wrote the bit about the commerce clause.
He was not writing for the court.
It's not part of the court's opinion.
It's what's called dicta.
Didn't even need to be in the ruling, his references to the commerce clause.
I don't know, all these people, and there's some smart people that are really fooling themselves on this into thinking the Commerce Clause has been dealt a mortal blow.
It hasn't.
You wait.
But what does it matter?
What is the next controversial course case that comes before the court that the media doesn't like, all they gotta do is threaten the same stuff.
And they're pretty confident they'll be able to change the Chief Justice's vote to get it to be whatever they want it to be.
They've got four in there that they can count on.
They've got four in there.
I mean, this is a this whole thing is a win-win for the government because instead of buying insurance, we're gonna be giving money to the government.
And wait till you hear the details of this and what all about you, the IRS is now empowered to learn about you, your entire family, your business, via your tax return, and how they're able to share it with other government agencies.
Uh it's uh yeah, I'm still sick, but more than that, now I'm just burning.
I'm just I'm really just angry about this because this uh I don't know what it is about people on our side.
My my good friend Mark Levin says our our people of Washington are so used to losing that they look at it as winning.
Anyway, brief timeout.
We're gonna come back.
I'm gonna get to your phone calls and uh well oh no, wait, before we go to the break, let me let me stay here.
Grab the top sound bites.
I want to pull I want you to play uh say three of them.
I got two from Carvin and one from Eastman.
Uh Mike Carvin was on the O'Reilly factor on Friday night.
Laura Ingram was the guest hostette.
And Carvin has argued this case, healthcare case, uh, before the Supreme Court and uh at a couple of other levels.
And he's stunned by this.
He was he was he was literally stunned by this.
Ingram said you were at the court arguing this case, and I know you were shocked by the way the decision came down, but do conservatives have a right to be mortified and really disappointed with what the Chief Justice did here?
Obviously, it was a very strange opinion.
The Chief Justice said that what Congress did and what it said it was doing was unconstitutional.
So I'm gonna pretend they did something different and therefore make it constitutional, which not only rewrites the statute, but eliminates all the safeguards that he had found under the Commerce Clause.
So it produces a bad constitutional result only by someone who's deliberately ignoring the law as it was actually written.
Chief Justice Roberts said during his confirmation that he was going to be an umpire who calls balls and strikes, but this time he saw a ball and called it a strike.
So the next question from Laura Ingram was why any sense that there might have been some last-minute change of heart on the part of the chief?
Uh that thought's been circulating among some of us former clerks.
She clerked for Clarence Thomas.
Uh, you've argued so many cases before the court over the years.
Any sense there might have been a last-minute change of heart.
A lot of people have noticed that the opinions are very odd in that they're referring to the concurrences to dissent, and the dissenting opinion never refers to the chief justice's opinion, which suggests that there might have been some changes during the process.
If that happened, that would be doubly unfortunate, of course, because it would validate President Obama's wholly unprecedented effort to politicize the court and attack them while they were writing an opinion.
I think it would leave a sour taste in everyone's mouth if it came out that Chief Justice Roberts had actually switched his vote after that criticism because it would create a terrible perception that the court is subject to political lobby.
And Jan Crawford CBS has that exact story.
It hit yesterday.
That's the exact story.
She sourced it twice.
Now I've I've said that that I happen to believe it, but it's it's also possible that the stories BS.
Uh because one of the favorite memes, what one of the favorite memes of the media is to write about conservatives at war with one another.
And that's what this is.
The four justices, uh, conservative justices at war with Roberts, and they love that theme.
So well, I I I I well I knew something was wrong because I had been warned.
Anyway, uh that's that's uh Carvand.
Where's uh see what's uh get out of order here?
Yeah, number three, John Eastman.
John Eastman, he is well, I gotta take a break, but But John Eastman is uh law professor at the Chapman University, and he's a good friend of our buddy, Dr. Larry Arne, who runs Hillsdale College.
Eastman's a great guy.
His soundbites are coming up.
Sit tight, don't go away.
And we are back.
Rush Limbaugh.
Talent on loan from God.
All right, the term in Espanol for free riders is somebody who takes advantage of the situation.
That is the term that would most likely be applied here to free riders.
Aprovechados.
So any Hispanics in the audience that are speed dialing here and they happen to come across a provechados.
Guarantee you they stopped in their tracks.
I don't know what that's about.
All right.
You know, have you any of you ever been in a jury?
Okay, you've seen television shows where a judge tells a jury, do not read the media.
You know the judge gives jury instructions.
You are specifically told by the judge you are not to be influenced by the news media or in fact anyone or anything apart from the facts of the case.
But Jan Crawford says that the Chief Justice was in fact directly impacted by just that.
John Eastman from the Chapman University Law School, he's a professor there.
And he you can he was mad on TV Friday night.
He was on the O'Reilly factor, Laura Ingram guest host edding.
And he was mad.
You could see just his facial expression.
He was mad.
She said, some people saying that this is a brilliant twist for the Chief Justice.
This is a victory for the Republicans because it narrowed the Commerce Clause jurisdiction, the uh the region of commerce clause.
So isn't that a good thing?
The issue here is whether the federal constitution limits the power of the federal government.
And I don't care whether they act under the Commerce Clause or under the spending clause, if they do things that were not delegated to them, the role of the court and the chief justice in particular is to say to Congress no.
Uh and if the assumption is right that he thinks this was unconstitutional, but found a way to uphold it to preserve the integrity of the court, then he really ought to resign because he proves that he doesn't have the judicial fortitude to do the job that he's been chosen to do.
I sat up straight when I saw that.
Ought to resign.
Really, if if if if going into this, the reason for this was to protect the integrity of the court.
But of course, you know, as far as the integrity of court's concern, we're back to the same old thing.
As far as the media is concerned, the integrity of the court's just fine.
Everything's cool.
Everything's fine.
There is no problem here.
The media says it's okay.
Whatever they say is okay.
The media approves of what you're doing.
You're home free.
This is this is Jan Crawford herself on Face the Nation on Sunday morning.
And this is in her own voice, uh, reporting the story that hit the wires on the CBS uh website on Sunday.
I am told by two sources with specific knowledge of the course deliberations that Roberts initially sided with the conservatives in this case and was prepared to strike down the heart of this law, the so-called individual mandate, of course, that requires all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty.
But Roberts, I'm told by my sources, changed his views, deciding to instead join with the liberals.
And he withstood, I'm told by my sources, a month-long, desperate campaign by the conservative justices to bring him back to the fault.
And that campaign was led, ironically, by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
And why that's ironic is because it was Justice Kennedy that conservatives feared would be the one most likely to defect.
Come on, Jan Kennedy was the one you guys feared was gonna defect.
Kennedy's always the focus of your attentions.
You guys are afraid of Kennedy.
You also hold out all your hope for Kennedy.
It's not just us.
Anyway, um that's from the reporter's own lips.
So, brief time out again, an obscene profit.
Timeout, it is.
Just to tell you about Jan Greenberg or Janberg.
Crawford Greenberg is her name.
She um remember Clarence Thomas's uh great memoir came out.
She did the profile.
I think for um now wait a minute.
That was he did 60 minutes.
I know she did some.
She was ABC.
I don't know.
She was uh she did a report, and it was very fair on on Clarence Thomas's book and his uh and his life.
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