Rush Limbaugh Program - February 27, 2014, Thursday, Hour #1

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Feb. 27, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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February 27, 2014, Thursday, Hour #1

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	Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
	And here we are, ladies and gentlemen.
	Great to be back.
	Great to be here.
	El Rushbo back behind the golden EIB microphone.
	It's time for more broadcast excellence.
	The telephone number, if you want to join us, will be on the program.
	It's 800-282-2882.
	The email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
	And a special welcome, as always, to those of you watching on the Ditto Cam at rushlimbaugh.com.
	People say, you know, Rush, you need to get back into TV.
	No, I don't.
	I'm on TV more than anybody who isn't on TV.
	I'm on TV more than a lot of people who are on TV or on TV.
	Did you, by the way, folks, before we get to this veto in Arizona, and I should point out a Rich Lowry at National Review has a good take on this.
	And the headline says it all.
	Brewer's Foolish Veto.
	Do you know this bill doesn't even say anything about homosexuality or gay marriage or anything in it?
	And we've discussed that in great detail, but I want to share with you Rich's take on it in mere moments, some audio soundbite support on this.
	But you remember when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize on the come?
	I don't want to add to the promotional fanfare of this, but there's a new kid that just got a TV show on MSNBC.
	He's been doing the show for three days.
	He's a daughter of Mia Farrell and somebody.
	It's not known if it's Frank Sinatra or Woody Ellen.
	This kid had been on television for three days and Wednesday night got the Cronkite Award for excellence in exploration and journalism.
	I mean, these people are so eager.
	You talk about people that are corrupting their own institutions in addition to ours.
	A kid who can doesn't even shave yet, it looks like.
	On the air for three days, gets the Cronkite Award.
	Can you imagine?
	Well, Cronkite, hell, he'd probably support it.
	So much that the Democrats are doing is on the come.
	And I told you a long time ago to be wary that the Clinton Lewinsky thing was going to lead to pop culture thinking it's cool and all that.
	You heard Beyonce's latest tune?
	Ho, ho, ho, ho.
	Well, hang on, Grad.
	Let's see.
	Audio Soundbite 6A.
	This is Beyonce Carter's website.
	She released a new song out there.
	It's in a video entitled Partition in the Limousine.
	Partition doesn't want the driver looking back.
	Wants the driver to close the partition.
	In the song, she sings about going to a club with her husband and not getting there before things got really steamy in the back of the limo.
	Somebody needs to tell Beyonce that Miley Cyrus has the Raunch title pretty much taken.
	But you need, this is only six seconds.
	It's going to go by real fast.
	I may have to translate this for you because it just, here goes.
	3, 2, 1.
	Oh, yes, sir.
	Bobkin, did you hear that?
	Were you want to hear that again?
	Here we go.
	Three, two, one.
	This is Beyonce.
	Imonic whiskey doll on my gown.
	That's got, you got it.
	Imonica Lewinsky, it all over my gown.
	Is that not something?
	So a kid after three days on TV gets the Cronkite Award for exploration and journalism.
	Also, Ben Affleck.
	Now, wait, no, no, no.
	Ben Affleck showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday as we told you it was going to happen to testify on Congo.
	And particularly, the Democrats literally went gaga.
	They went celebrity gaga.
	It was the most embarrassing thing to see.
	You have an actor, an expert on Congo, and the members of the Senate are...
	I mean, it is a shame what is happening right before our very eyes.
	As the pop culture influences now the elitist political culture, remember showbiz, politics, showbiz for the ugly.
	And the people in political showbiz really want to be in A-list showbiz.
	So when an A-list showbizzer shows up, they just went Gaga.
	Ben Affleck, IQ of a pencil.
	Well, never mind.
	Take that back.
	Take that back.
	What?
	That's right.
	Exactly right.
	Exactly right.
	Your kids are going to be driving around.
	They're going to be listening to Beyonce.
	Blue Ivy will be listening.
	Oh, I'm sure Blue Ivy was at the recording session.
	Blue Ivy.
	I guess you want to hear this one more time?
	There seems to be a natural craving for this.
	So here it is.
	It's entered the pop culture.
	He Monica Lewinsky all over my gown.
	It's a love song, folks.
	I mean, this is, she's not upset at any of this.
	You wonder why Democrats embrace Clinton and why the pop culture is Clinton?
	I told you, I warned you this is going to happen way back many, many moons ago.
	Okay, Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, vetoed religious freedom.
	And naturally, Democrats and their media allies are cheering.
	Even some Republicans are praising Arizona.
	Meanwhile, our founding fathers more than likely are spinning in their graves at about 400 RPM.
	In fact, folks, if you read Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, authored by me, you might even come to learn how important religious freedom has been to this country even since before its beginning.
	Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims is all about religious freedom.
	It's all about freedom, period.
	And I'm beginning to think that people, in addition to 10 and 13-year-olds, need to read this.
	The pilgrims escaped Holland and London for religious freedom.
	They came to the new world before there was an America for religious freedom.
	And that voyage and their establishment of Plymouth Colony and everything that happened there gave birth later on, years and years, decades later, to our founding documents.
	This is a nation that is founded on the principle of religious freedom.
	That is the reason this country exists.
	And it just bit the dust in Arizona.
	Here's the audio sound bites.
	Let's start with Governor Brewer.
	And we've got two of these bites.
	Here you go.
	I've not heard of one example in Arizona where a business owner's religious liberty has been violated.
	The bill is broadly worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences.
	After weighing all of the arguments, I have vetoed Senate Bill 1062 moments ago.
	She said that she's not heard of an example or Arizona business owners' religious liberty has been violated.
	Maybe she's not aware of what's happened in Utah, Colorado, where businesses were shut down for this reason.
	Here is the next explanation, Governor Brewer.
	To the supporters of this legislation, I want you to know that I understand that long-held norms about marriage and family are being challenged as never before.
	Our society is undergoing many dramatic changes.
	However, I sincerely believe that Senate Bill 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve.
	I could divide Arizona in ways we cannot even imagine, and no one would ever want.
	Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value.
	So is non-discrimination.
	You know, this is, I've been reading some people's review of this, and the victors, the people that are crowing over all this, are claiming that what really happened here is that a phony bill that was rooted in phony religious freedom under the guise of homophobia was vetoed by Jan Brewer.
	So the people that won this thing are beating their chests.
	They're out there claiming here that non-discrimination triumphed over discrimination.
	There was nothing about religious freedom in this bill at all.
	It was all anti-gay.
	It was under the guise of religious freedom.
	And if you read the bill, it's two pages.
	There's nothing about homosexuality.
	The word isn't mentioned.
	Gay weddings, marriage, none of that is mentioned.
	Rich Lowry, Brewer's foolish vetoes.
	Jarring to read the coverage of the new anti-gay bill, quote unquote, passed by the Arizona legislature and then look up the text of the bill.
	Jarring to read the way this bill was portrayed than to actually read it.
	The bill was 998 pages shorter than much of the legislation it passes in Washington.
	Most bills are a thousand pages.
	This was two pages.
	So reading this bill didn't take much of a commitment.
	It was easy to scan to find any disparaging references to homosexuality.
	It was easy to scan this bill for any veiled references to homosexuality.
	In fact, you couldn't find any references to homosexuality.
	They weren't there.
	There weren't any references to homosexuality.
	A headline from The Week declared there is nothing Christian about Arizona's anti-gay bill.
	It would be more accurate to say there was nothing anti-gay about Arizona's anti-gay bill.
	The bill was not anti-gay.
	It was pro-religious freedom.
	And that's why the victors are out there beating their chests like Tarzan in the jungle, saying that non-discrimination has triumphed over gay bashing in the guise of religious freedom.
	The legislation consisted of what were actually minor clarifications of Arizona's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been on the books for 15 years and, in fact, is modeled on the federal act that passed with big bipartisan majorities in the 1990s and was signed into law by Bill Clinton.
	In other words, the bill mirrors a federal law that is already the law of the land, of course, being ignored.
	And just like Arizona had tried to pass its own immigration laws that mirrored federal immigration laws because Obama wasn't enforcing them and the judge threw that out.
	Arizona said, you know what?
	We're not going to wait for the judge to throw it out.
	We'll just do it ourselves this time, essentially.
	Here's the real nub of it.
	Everybody knows it.
	Arizona was going to lose the Super Bowl over this.
	A two-page piece of legislation.
	This was media coverage that portrayed this bill in ways that it wasn't.
	This is how it works.
	This is the Washington soap opera.
	That's why I said two days ago that everybody here was being bullied because the bill was mischaracterized from the get-go.
	And everybody, the low-information voters, hell, everybody else thought it was a gay bashing bill.
	Who reads legislation for crying out loud?
	Hell, members of Congress don't even read it anymore.
	Why would we expect John Q six-pack citizen to take the time to go find it and read it?
	Governor Brewer took no chances.
	She might lose a Super Bowl, vetoed the bill on Wednesday, was the subject of a truly awe-inspiring tsunami of poorly informed indignation.
	New York Times editorial board, the bill was a license to discriminate.
	It constituted a legalizing of anti-gay prejudice, according to U.S. News and World Report.
	Salon scoffed that it was cartoonishly bigoted.
	A reference to Jim Crow was obligatory in any discussion of the bill on the mind vacuum that is cable TV.
	Writing in the week, Elizabeth Stoker said the logic of the bill threatens to twist Christianity into a vile, exclusionary, isolating thing.
	But it was beyond the power of Arizona lawmakers to redefine Christianity.
	Stoker must have mistaken the Arizona legislature for the Council of Nicaea.
	In USA Today, the influential liberal pundit Kirsten Powers posited that the bill would enable all-out civil conflict with Muslim pharmacists possibly refusing to give uncovered women anti-bias.
	That's already happening and it's protected.
	I've got a story here in the stack where the regime sent the EEOC or some bureaucracy after a trucking company in Illinois.
	They fired a couple of Muslims who refused to deliver alcohol or some such thing.
	And the federal government, you can't fire them for that.
	They've got their religious freedom.
	Muslim religious freedom.
	Let me find it.
	I take a break.
	I'll find it.
	We'll come back.
	I'll continue with this, folks.
	As you can tell, we're just getting warmed up.
	And they've got a press release from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission bragging about this.
	Star Transport Incorporated trucking company based in Morton, Illinois, violated federal law by failing to accommodate two employees because of their religion, Islam, and discharging them.
	The EEOC charged in a lawsuit filed today.
	Whatever the database think at this yesterday, the lawsuit alleged that Star Transport refused to provide two employees with an accommodation of their religious beliefs when it terminated their employment because they refused to deliver alcohol.
	So the feds went in and sanctioned Star Transport, sues them because they fired a couple of employees who refused to deliver alcohol, and they refused because of a violation of their religious tenets.
	They're Muslims and they don't want to be anywhere near alcohol.
	Our investigation revealed that Star could have readily avoided assigning these employees to alcohol delivery without any undue hardship, but chose to force the issue,
	despite the employees' Islamic religion, failure to accommodate the religious beliefs of employees when this can be done without undue hardship violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion.
	Well, so here when the religious freedom of business owners in Arizona is ignored, the religious freedom of employees in Illinois is upheld by the federal government.
	So this religious freedom business really does only go one way right now.
	And look, I'm not reviewing all of this Arizona stuff because I think there was a different outcome possible.
	There was no way this governor was ever going to not veto this.
	The bullying that was going on and the NFL chiming in and threatening to take the Super Bowl away.
	That's all it took.
	I mean, that was the end of it there.
	And then Apple Computer with the Apple Incorporated, hey, you know, we're bringing 2,000 jobs to the state.
	Maybe.
	It depends.
	There was no question how this is going to go.
	But since we are interested in the truth and having you know it, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this.
	Now, let me just reiterate.
	There was no way Governor Brewer was not going to veto this bill.
	So I'm not spending time on this trying to beat her up after the fact.
	There was only one possible outcome here.
	There was only one.
	This state has been beaten up by Obama.
	It's been beat up by every civil rights activist you can think of.
	They've been totally cowed.
	I think it's amazing they got this far, frankly, in getting the legislation they had passed.
	But I want to go back to Rich Lowry's piece because, and then a couple of audio soundbites from Bill Donahue from the Catholic League, who had to try to explain to Chris Cuomo today on CNN what this was really all about.
	In USA Today, the influential liberal pundit Kirsten Powers posited that the bill would enable all-out civil conflict with Muslim pharmacists possibly refusing to give uncovered women antibiotics, meaning women not wearing the burqa for those of you in Riolinda.
	They think uncovered means something else there.
	Christian pacifists could refuse to let army sergeants stay in their hotels and Christian restaurateurs who oppose judging gays, refusing to serve overly judgmental Christians.
	That's what she was, all of this was thrown out as, oh my God, if she vetoes this bill, you get Katie Barthador.
	We're going to have people being denied service and products and just everywhere.
	Because don't you know, this is just the most discriminatory, bigoted country ever.
	And the left has to come in and protect the bigots and everybody else from themselves.
	Well, as Rich Lowry writes, if you'll excuse a brief, boring break from the hysteria to dwell on the actual text of the bill, it stipulated that the word person in the law applies to businesses and that the protections of the law apply whether or not the government is directly a party to a proceeding,
	i.e. lawsuit that's brought on anti-discrimination grounds.
	11 legal experts on religious freedom statutes wrote a letter to Governor Brewer prior to her veto explaining how the bill has been egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics.
	In addition to the federal government, 18 states have such statutes, and about a dozen other states interpret their state constitutions as extending the same protections.
	In other words, this is common, what Arizona was attempting to establish.
	You know, if you want to get ticked off about something, there is, how to phrase this in a different way.
	Jonathan Turley, again, constitutional professor somewhere, Georgetown, showed up again to testify on Capitol Hill.
	And he's up there.
	He's wringing his hands.
	We're at a constitutional tipping point.
	I've got the sound bites here coming up later.
	We're at a constitutional tipping point.
	Because Obama just run on roughshod.
	But so did Bush, he said, to qualify because he's a good liberal.
	So I have to throw Bush in there.
	It's not even close, Jonathan.
	Bush and Obama.
	It's not even close.
	Constitutional usurpation.
	There's never been anybody like Obama.
	Anyway, Turley says, this is very bad.
	You know why Turley says it's very bad?
	Because the founding fathers never dreamed that the other two branches would basically lay down and allow themselves to be walked all over.
	The founding fathers thought that the people of the judicial and legislative branches would be trying to get as much power from the executive as they could.
	But they would not just lay down and let an executive walk all over them.
	He said he can't believe it.
	He cannot believe Congress doesn't care.
	They're losing power.
	Obama's taking it.
	Now, by the way, Turley knew he's going to be in trouble for this.
	You know what else he said?
	By the way, I happen to agree with everything the president's doing policy-wise.
	I just have a problem with how he's doing it.
	Give me a break.
	That is a qualifier that's a bit suspicious to me.
	You know, yeah, I agree with the president policy-wise most of the time.
	I'm just worried.
	What a constitutional tipping point.
	Well, the same thing here.
	Turley is right.
	The other branches are just laying down.
	They're just allowing this to happen.
	And you and I know why.
	And it's the same reason why everybody, why the governor and all of the forces behind this bill laid down.
	There is just abject fear of minorities right now.
	There is fear of being labeled a bigot or a racist.
	The whole debate is set up.
	Everything the majority wants to do now is bigoted, anti-discriminatory, or not anti, it is discriminatory.
	It's the way everything's been characterized.
	And so the people who are trying to do the right thing never stand up for themselves after they're trying to do it.
	The right thing has no defense.
	The right thing has nobody shouting in its defense.
	The right thing has nobody after they write it and have to make an effort.
	They let it die.
	They allow themselves to be walked all over.
	They allow themselves to be mischaracterized.
	They allow their work to be mischaracterized.
	Never seen anything like it.
	And we all know why.
	Fear of the media.
	It's clear as a bell what made this in Arizona happen.
	The media and the left-wing bullies were able to totally mischaracterize what this was.
	And the people who knew that they were being mischaracterized didn't dare stand up and say, no, you're wrong.
	Just didn't want to take that risk.
	Figured they'd have nobody on their side.
	They figured they'd have no support, no help.
	Didn't want to be a lone wolf or a series of lone wolves.
	And they just say, you know what?
	We'll get this issue off the table.
	We'll come back.
	We'll get them.
	We'll get them on.
	We'll get them on, well, whatever.
	We'll get them on the next one.
	And they cave on the next one and say, we'll get them on the next one.
	And they cave on that.
	And you and I know why.
	So what Arizona had on the table is something that's already federal law and essentially the law in 18 states and others.
	Now, wrap up Lowry.
	The letter that these 11 legal experts wrote, Governor Brewer, telling her how this bill is good properly, how it's been mischaracterized.
	The letter argues that properly interpreted, the federal law that inspired this statute in Arizona properly interpreted this.
	The federal law that inspired this Arizona statute covers cases that do not directly involve the government, and it covers businesses.
	So Arizona's changes were not radical.
	They were in keeping with a federal law once championed by none other than Ted Kennedy.
	Now, a religious freedom statute doesn't give anyone carte blanc to do whatever he wants in the name of religion.
	It simply allows him to make his case in court that a law or a lawsuit substantially burdens his religion and that there's no compelling government interest to justify the burden.
	And now that's even been taken away here for critics of the Arizona bill.
	The substance was an afterthought.
	The substance didn't matter.
	It was the opportunity the bill gave them.
	A mischaracterize it.
	B, call it gay bashing.
	C, attach it to the Republicans and make them out to be the usual racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes.
	D, scare them into paralysis.
	And then E, we get what we want.
	And what we want is this Constitution shredded and bastardized every chance we can.
	The question, ladies and gentlemen, isn't whether businesses run by people opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds should provide their services for gay weddings, but it became that.
	Not only is this the denial of religious freedom, this is using the force of government to force people to act in ways they don't want to act.
	It's a double whammy.
	But the question again isn't whether businesses run by people opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds should provide their services for gay weddings.
	It's whether they should be compelled to by the government.
	That's the question, and that's what just happened.
	The government can now compel people, just like they can't compel you to buy a product or insurance, but now they can.
	The government can't compel you to do business with people you don't want to, except now they can.
	The critics of this much-maligned Arizona bill pride themselves on their live and let-live open-mindedness.
	Oh, yeah.
	They're the tolerant ones, you see.
	They're the ones that are not closed-minded.
	They're the ones that are not bigoted.
	Oh, no, and they certainly aren't the bullies.
	Oh, no.
	They're just loving, kind, soft-spoken, gentle people who just want everybody to get along, except when you don't agree with them.
	And then they become like jack-booted thugs.
	And they start bullying everybody in their way.
	They become highly moralistic in their support of gay marriage, judgmental of those who oppose it, and tolerant of only one point of view, their own.
	They are exact opposite of the way they portray themselves.
	Now, I'm going to tell you something going to be interesting to watch out there, folks.
	I have this story right here, my formerly nicotine sting.
	It is from the Associated Press, a U.S. Appeals Court, that would be the U.S. Ninth Circus Court of Appeals.
	The Ninth Circus has ordered YouTube owned by Google, loved by the regime.
	Google and the regime are inseparable, except the Ninth Circus has ordered Google through its YouTube subsidiary to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent riots in parts of the Middle East and death threats to the actors.
	Now, what's this?
	A business, Google, can be forced not to serve a customer that'd be the YouTube uploader here because it might offend somebody's religious beliefs.
	This is a perfect example.
	I'm going to spell this out here for you.
	Just hang in there because this is a perfect example of how some religious beliefs are more equal than other religious beliefs.
	You have a business here, you get Google, and they are now being forced by the government not to serve a customer, the YouTube uploader, the video maker, because it might offend someone's religious beliefs.
	And the Ninth Circus is basing this on an actress who's only in the movie for five seconds in a trumped-up lawsuit.
	It has nothing to do with that, however.
	Even the Ninth Circus admits this isn't the way the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown orders work.
	Now, here's why this is happening.
	President Obama told the United Nations back in September of 2012, quote, the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam, quote unquote.
	That's Obama at the UN in September two years ago.
	Google says they're going to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.
	They don't want the government telling them what they can and can't upload.
	Now, especially they're Google.
	They're blue.
	The regime is blue.
	So we got a little blue-on-blue action here.
	And it's going to be fun to watch this.
	YouTube has resisted calls by Obama and other world leaders to take down the video, arguing that to do so amounted to unwarranted government censorship, would violate the Google-owned company's free speech protections.
	Google says, hey, you want to post something on YouTube?
	As long as you own the rights to it, have at it.
	We have freedom of speech here.
	Here comes the regime.
	As Obama said, the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.
	Even you, Sergei, and even you, Larry.
	Sergey Bran, Larry Page, the founders.
	Now, I'm going to grab a call.
	Oh, what happened to the caller?
	Oh, he's still there.
	I'm going to take a chance on this.
	Jim, we got a guy who works for the Star Trucking Company on the phone.
	He's driving through Wisconsin.
	Hey, Jim, welcome to the program.
	Great to have you here.
	Hi.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah, you're Jim, right?
	Yeah, I'm Jim.
	Okay.
	It's the first time I've ever called you.
	Well, yeah, I don't work for Star anymore.
	I used to.
	But what I was trying to tell you, the screener was that you got Star has a policy when you first go in for orientation, you have what they call a forced dispatch, which means the dispatcher will give you a load and you have to take it.
	and you sign that paper.
	So you said something about the...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	I want to make sure I understand this.
	So you get hired at Star Trucking.
	Star Trucking gives you a piece of paper that you agree to sign.
	And when you sign it, you are agreeing to ship whatever they give you.
	Whatever's in the shipment, you'll drive it.
	Yes, yes.
	It's basically the dispatcher gives you a load, sends you a load, and you have to.
	So meaning when you sign this, you know, You have no, you can't refuse whatever they may put in the, in the, in the trailer.
	You've got to take it.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And so you think these two Muslim drivers knew full well when they signed on that they might have to drive some alcohol?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's part.
	That's basically what the paper says.
	You have to take whatever.
	It's a forced dispatch company, and you have to take whatever you're given.
	Well, whatever they dispatch you on, you have to take that load.
	You can't.
	Well, not anymore, Jim.
	That's the case anymore.
	What's happened, the government has just told Star Trucking that they can't do that anymore.
	They can't force.
	Now, they could make you drive a bunch of condoms.
	Well, you might.
	They could make you drive whatever you want to drive.
	You couldn't object to it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it doesn't matter.
	You have to take the load.
	No, you don't.
	That's the point.
	Well, most companies are like that.
	Most companies don't have a no-force dispatch policy, but Star was one of the companies I'd worked for that had it.
	Well, the first company I'd worked for, they had.
	Okay, so the point is that these two guys knew full well.
	They signed a release, in essence.
	We know what's going on here, too, folks.
	This didn't just happen, and there just isn't some couple of guys randomly offended and doing something about it.
	We know what's going on here.
	National Football Green mentioned it yesterday.
	It's now grown even bigger.
	If you're going to ban the N-word, you better ban the F-word.
	It'd be the gay slur F-word.

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