The Last Days of the United States

June 12, 2008 RUSH: The Supreme Court ruled this morning that foreign terrorism suspects held at Club Gitmo have rights under the Constitution that challenge their detention in US civilian courts. It was a 5-4 ruling, Anthony Kennedy, the fifth vote, wrote the opinion, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the Supreme Court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at Club Gitmo. "It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to Al Qaida and the Taliban." As I said, a military lawyer for Bin Laden's ex-driver has sought dismissal of his case after the Supreme Court ruling this morning. Now, this is an abomination. This is just outrageous. Never before in the history of US warfare have we had to go out and Mirandize prisoners of war. That's what we're going to effectively have to do. We're going to have to read prisoners of war their rights just as we would a thief at the local convenience store. I'll tell you what this means. This means, don't capture 'em. There is a reaction for every action, and what this means is don't capture 'em. And if you're going to rendition 'em -- and, by the way, that's something started by Bill Clinton in the mid-nineties, rendition is where you send these people to unknown locations where they are held captive by the leaders of those nations who are your allies. Of course, an eager beaver press will be eager to find out where these prisoners have been taken as long as there's a Republican president. What's going to happen now, if these guys, these 270 guys now have access to the US Constitution as though they are citizens, these clowns at Club Gitmo, now the American servicemen and women who captured them going to have to be brought home for trial to explain their actions? I mean, a lot of unanswered questions here, but Ed Morrissey writes at the Hot Air blog, he says in our 232-year history, when have we ever allowed this kind of access to enemy combatants not captured inside the United States itself? These people have been captured in the battlefield. These people have been captured in Afghanistan and in Iraq, certain parts of Pakistan, they're brought to Club Gitmo, and now they are having conferred upon them US constitutional rights. So there is absolutely no limit now, no respect for the law anymore. The moral of this story is going to shake out this way. Take no captives. This is a victory for the enemy. It is a disgrace. It is inexplicable, but the Drive-Bys are happy. In fact, we'll start with Jeffrey Toobin at CNN celebrating this loss. And here's another thing. One of the things that really frustrates me about this, if you read the coverage, it was a loss for the Bush administration. It was another defeat for the Bush administration. Wrongo, Drive-Bys. It's a defeat for the United States of America. This is bad for the country. This is bad for US national security. Not just bad for Bush. But, of course, that's the context, and that's the action line, the narrative here, this is Bush's war. It's the United States of America's war, and it's bad news. Here's Jeffrey Toobin on CNN this morning. TOOBIN: This is really an extraordinary situation. This is the third time in four years that the Supreme Court has told the Bush administration, you're wrong, the system you set up, this time with the consent of Congress, is unconstitutional, does not give the detainees adequate rights to go to court and challenge their incarceration. What this decision sets the stage for is detainees having the opportunity to go to federal court and say, "Look, I don't belong here, federal judge, let me out."

RUSH: Yeah. Where are they going to find these courts? They're going to be bringing these people right here on the United States of America's home soil. That's what I'm saying, no limits, no respect for law anymore because this time the president had the consent of Congress, which establishes the law. The Supreme Court said this is unconstitutional. This is about military tribunals. You know what else? We've got Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his other five cohorts and these guys who have admitted doing what they've done, they might have to be released. Or they may be allowed to petition for their release, even after having admitted it and seeking martyrdom by asking to be executed. This time with the consent of Congress, the Supreme Court nevertheless says it's unconstitutional. It doesn't give the detainees rights to go to court and challenge their incarceration. What it gives them the right to do is to go to the judge and say, "Judge, I don't belong here; let me out." Here's Pete Hoekstra this morning on Fox News Channel, Bill Hemmer talked to him and asked for his reaction. HOEKSTRA: My initial reaction is a great deal of concern. Remember, some of these folks that were going to be tried on these tribunals are picked up on the battlefield. If these folks now have access to our federal courts and have the same protections as American citizens under the Constitution, what does this say to an American soldier who captures one of these terrorists on the battlefield and may still be being fired at in terms of collecting evidence, rights of the person that he's captured and all of these types of things? Boy, I'll tell you I'm very concerned about what it means to our troops who are in harm's way on the battlefield as a result of this court ruling. RUSH: So Hemmer says, in a physical sense, does Club Gitmo close now, does it close down soon, and what happens to Rush Limbaugh's thriving licensed merchandise business there? HOEKSTRA: One of the reasons that Gitmo was in existence was that we believe that that was the appropriate place to hold them if they -- if it doesn't matter where you hold them and the court has ruled that regardless of where these individuals are detained or held, they are extended the rights of the US Constitution even though they are foreigners, it may be immaterial as to whether Gitmo exists or not. RUSH: That's absolutely right. So you better jump on board, get your Club Gitmo gear fast while there still is a Club Gitmo. We knew this was coming, and that's what makes it all the more frustrating. Levin, in his 2005 book Men in Black, had a chapter called "Al-Qaeda Gets a Lawyer." This has been a disaster in the making. It all started with the Rasul and Hamdi decisions in 2004. So this is what happens when you get leftists on the bench. It's plain as day for anybody to see what's happening. The key is finding ways to stop -- you can't -- what you do about a Supreme Court decision at this point in time with an administration entering its last months in office with the Democrat Party no doubt is going to be celebrating this left and right. And, of course, need I remind you where Senator McCain comes down on this? Would you like to know where Senator McCain comes down? I haven't heard him react today, but I know that he wants to close Club Gitmo, does he not? And why does he want to close Club Gitmo? He wants to close Club Gitmo 'cause he thinks it's unconstitutional. He could have been on the Supreme Court, and yet McCain promises us that he will nominate the right kind of judges for the Supreme Court, yet he's agreeing with the libs and Kennedy today on the court, so -- (laughing) -- (doing McCain impression) "I feel like I'm going crazy sitting here."

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Read the Background Material...

• National Review: The Gitmo Defeat - Mark R. Levin • HotAir: Breaking: Supreme Court says Gitmo Detainees Must Have Access to US Courts - Ed Morrissey • AP: High Court Ruling May Delay War Crimes Trials

Peter Schweizer on Liberal Whiners

RUSH: Since we're on this basic subject -- and what is the basic subject? What would you say, Mr. Snerdley? I often ask the staff these questions and see if they're actually paying attention, folks, because I know that you are. What would you say is the basic theme of the program? (interruption) Well, okay, yeah, true, market economics, indisputable, market economics. But why are we having to explain market economics? (interruption) Right, which is leading to what? Gas prices, which is leading to what? People are whining. Don't take this personally. Certain people are whining, and when people start whining, especially Baby Boomers, the truth gets lost. When you start whining who do you whine to? You might whine to me, you might whine to government, or whatever. Peter Schweitzer has a book out that's a very long title. I'm gonna collapse the title here: Makers and Takers: conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, give more generously, blah, blah, blah, blah, than do liberals. And his column, a little excerpt from it here today: "'Modern Liberals, Whine Connoisseurs' -- Barack Obama is many things -- a senator, a gifted orator, and a charismatic figure. But he's also a whiner. ... Michelle Obama whines about the burdens of paying for piano lessons and summer camp for the kids, and the paying off the student loans for her two Ivy League degrees. ... But the Obamas' penchant for whining didn't begin with the presidential campaign. Michelle Obama, in her Princeton undergraduate thesis titled 'Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community', complains of 'further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society.'" It's a full whine. Now, here's the point. I do think that it would be politically potent and advantageous -- it would never happen -- for the Republican Party to actually target these people on the left for what they are. They are whiners. This is why the whiners are on the left, and Schweitzer makes this point. The worst thing about whiners is that they almost always expect other people to do what is necessary to make 'em feel better. They don't undertake these things themselves. For example -- and this is what I meant with my Baby Boomer reference mere moments ago -- here we have a gasoline problem. A lot of people, by the way, are worried about rationing -- according to polling data -- more than they're worried about prices. They're worried about another shortage. People lived through it back in the seventies, contrived shortage. There is not a shortage. So it would have been to be a contrived shortage. But we have all these Baby Boomers who have grown up spoiled rotten. I've always contended this. I am a Baby Boomer. I know this to be true. Baby Boomers have so much time on their hands that they can make their whole lives, every moment of every day, about them. They never had to learn early on in life or even now that there are things in life larger than they are, 'cause that's not possible. They are the center of the universe. Their parents raised them that way. Their parents really went through hell in order to give us the life that we have, so we've had to invent our traumas. Attention deficit disorder, all these other things, we've had to invent them to make ourselves think that we've had challenges, life's been tough. And, of course, these things are relative, but if you get an attitude that says this is impossible, this is tough, I can't stand the pressure, you're really feeling it, so it turns out to be real, but in a comparative analysis of what people lived through in the Depression and the Korean War, World War II and the Cold War, and defeated all those things, that was real pressure. They didn't want to have their kids to have to experience those things, so they grew up real fast, and they wanted a better life for their kids, and they provided it on balance. So here we are, things for us, Baby Boomers, have been plentiful, and in many cases, whatever we wanted, within reason, we got. Now all of a sudden it's getting harder to get some things. A bunch of liberal Baby Boomers say, "Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! I want my gasoline, fix it!" while at the same time joining forces with those who are standing in the way of finding more, refining more. So they whine and they moan, but they do nothing to alleviate the problem themselves. They will then turn around and vote for the people who have made them miserable, because the people that have made 'em miserable are blaming the other guys for making them miserable, and the other guys, "Oh, I guess we're Republicans, and we don't have a way to answer that." I've known golfers -- because I play a lot of golf, as you people know -- I've known golfers who whine about everything from the condition of the course to their equipment. But I've never heard one of them demand that the government tax everybody else to provide 'em with golf lessons, a new set of clubs, to go out and improve the course or give them a new putter. But that's what Michelle (My Belle) and all these liberal Baby Boomers do.

Read the Background Material...

• National Review: Modern Liberals, Whine Connoisseurs - Peter Schweizer

Obama: Gradual Gas Price Rise Would be Fine

Obama: Gradual Gas Price Rise Would be Fine

RUSH: Here's what Obama said. "Obama suggested that rising gas prices are not the problem. The problem, he suggested, is they've gone up too fast. He said he would prefer a 'gradual adjustment.'" So your Democrat Party presidential nominee is all for rising gas prices. He just wouldn't have had them go up this fast if he'd had anything to do about it. There would have been a more gradual increase

Heterosexual AIDS Pandemic Threat Was Myth

Heterosexual AIDS Pandemic Threat Was Myth

RUSH: From the UK Independent, the headline: "'Threat of World AIDS Pandemic Among Heterosexuals is Over, Report Admits' -- A quarter of a century after the outbreak of AIDS, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared." May I give you people a little hint? There never was one. It was made up. I know, Snerdley, you think I'm going to get in trouble. There never was a global heterosexual AIDS pandemic. It was a threat. It was a myth. "In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major AIDS organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de [sic] Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/AIDS said there will be no generalised epidemic of AIDS in the heterosexual population outside Africa. Dr. de Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed.

"Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients." Sex workers? Is that like prostitutes? Is that what they mean? Or people that work in sex clinics? I think they mean prostitutes. So this little liberal organization here led by Dr. De Cock, he's saying that after 25 years, it's now recognized that outside sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS was confined to high-risk groups, including men who have sex with men. Not women who have sex with women. Well, it doesn't say that. It says men who have sex with men and injecting drug users and prostitutes and their clients.

Dr. De Cock said, "It's very unlikely there will be a --" if my name is De Cock and I ran this organization, I'd change it. I would change my name. "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia -- China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas. … AIDS still kills more adults than all wars and conflicts combined." Even the Iraq war. Yes, it's hard to believe, ladies and gentlemen, but AIDS kills more people worldwide than the Iraq war. I'm not making it up. This is what Dr. De Cock says of the World Health Organization.

US Senate Privatizes Its Failing Restaurants

US Senate Privatizes Its Failing Restaurants

RUSH: I'm going to read you a little passage here, ladies and gentlemen, a little quote from one of our heroes, Ronald Reagan, whom our own side is telling us to get over. He said: "We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people. And that the climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those 'permanent things' that we've always believed in. ... But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories. It's also a company town, and the company's name is government, big government. ... In the discussion of federal spending, the time has come to put to rest the sob sister attempts to portray our desire to get government spending under control as a hard-hearted attack on the poor people of America."

To this day, we have a federal budget over $3 trillion. Any mention of cutting it is still said to be aimed at the poor, minorities and women, hardest-hit. We don't change anything in Washington unless a Reagan comes along. Obama isn't going to change anything. Obama is going to do what leftists and liberals have done for eons, and that's to try to grow the government to as large as it can, raise taxes on as many people as possible, and eliminate as much personal freedom and liberty as he can. There's nothing new about Obama. Reagan was change. "The climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those 'permanent things' that we've always believed in. ...

"But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories." Does that not describe Barack Obama? We have all of these examples, countless examples of government failing in every mission it takes, be it fixing and restoring and maintaining levees in New Orleans, to reducing poverty, to streamlining healthcare. There is no evidence that government is fit to run it. In fact, the Senate dining room, wait until you hear this. Dianne Feinstein has ordered the Senate dining room to go private. It's losing money. It loses millions. The food's lousy and if they don't go private, Senator's lunch prices will go up 25%. The House already did it.

Here's the sad story, ladies and gentlemen, and this is in the Washington Post today: "Year after year, decade upon decade, the US Senate's network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money -- more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year alone, according to another." We're talking about Senate restaurants. "The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month." Now, keep in mind, this is who we are told is best suited to manage our energy policy, to manage our healthcare. They screw up every major thing they try because they are not the best qualified.

"The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under the control of a contractor and all but guarantee lower wages and benefits for the outfit's new hires. The House is expected to agree -- its food service operation has been in private hands since the 1980s -- and President Bush's signature on the bill would officially end a seven-month Democratic feud and more than four decades of taxpayer bailouts," for Senators to dine. "Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Rules and Administrations Committee, which oversees the operation of the Senate, said she had no choice. 'It's cratering,' she said of the restaurant system. 'Candidly, I don't think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn't need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses.'" So they're going to privatize it.

"In a letter to colleagues, Feinstein said that the Government Accountability Office found that 'financially breaking even has not been the objective of the current management due to an expectation that the restaurants will operate at a deficit annually.'" Oh yeah, just like the federal government does. "But Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), speaking for the group of senators who opposed privatizing the restaurants, said that 'you cannot stand on the Senate floor and condemn the privatization of workers, and then turn around and privatize the workers here in the Senate and leave them out on their own.'"

You know, he's got a point. The Democrats are being a little inconsistent here. They argue against the privatization of anything in government that would make it run better, but now all of a sudden in the Senate dining room, a different story. You know what one of the key factors here is? Senate opposition to privatization melted when faced with this choice. "Feinstein made another presentation May 7, warning senators that if they did not agree to turn over the operation to a private contractor, prices would be increased 25 percent across the board."

These are the people that you are being told can best administer your healthcare? They can't even run their own restaurants at a profit and we have been paying for these people to eat? Do you know how many millionaires there are in the United States Senate, particularly on the Democrat side? Do you know how many? It's an astounding number. I know there are some businesses that are so large that they have cafeterias and restaurants for their employees. I, frankly, in my life, have never worked at a place that paid for any meal of mine unless I was on business somewhere. But I have never, ever, worked at a place that bought my meals. I take it back. I want to be factually correct.

When I worked at the Kansas City Royals during home games, the employees, certain of them, ate in the press room with the press because we were working. But when the season was over or when the team was on the road, they did not open that room and feed us. We got to go to the stadium club, but we paid for it. These people have been running their restaurant at a loss because it was just expected to run at a loss and we were going to pay for it, and these are the people that want to run your healthcare.