Yesterday I posted Rush Limbaugh’s initial reaction to the nomination of Harriet Miers. The MSM picked up on his weakness comment. Here is Limbaugh’s response to NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell:
O'DONNELL: And radio giant Rush Limbaugh... When radio personality Rush Limbaugh told listeners the president made "a pick out of weakness," Vice President Cheney phoned in the damage control.
RUSH: Now, that's not correct. We had the discussion, the interview with Vice President Cheney set up hours before the program started, and the reason we didn't post it on the website is because the time was floating. He was in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and he was speaking to the troops yesterday. We originally were going to go between 1:15 and 1:30, and the vice president's office asked us if they could lead off the one o'clock hour with it, but this was at ten o'clock. This was three hours, maybe two-and-a-half hours before the program began. They didn't call here after I said that. They may never call here again (laughing) but they didn't call here after. There wasn't this "damage control" that was aimed at this program because of anything that was said on this program.
Its amazing how far the MSM will go to distort the news. Limbaugh’s weakness comment was also a question at yesterday’s Bush press conference:
REPORTER: You said a few minutes ago that you're proudly conservative, but there was a lot of hand-wringing when you made your nomination yesterday of Harriet Miers. Rush Limbaugh said it was "a nomination out of weakness." What do you say to these critics specifically and how can you convince them that -- that if she is as conservative as Justices, um, Scalia and Thomas?
THE PRESIDENT: Hmm. I guess I'll start over. I hope they're listening. First, she's a woman of enormous accomplishment. She is. She understands the law. She's got a keen mind. She will not legislate from the bench. I also remind them that I think it's important to bring somebody from outside the judicial system, somebody from -- that hasn't been on the bench, and therefore there's not a lot of opinions for people to look at. Harriet Miers will testify; there's going to be a lot of attention paid to her testimony. First of all she'll go meet with the senators individually, and then she'll answer questions, and people will get to see not only her strength of character, but we'll get a sense of her judicial philosophy. I'm hopeful she'll get confirmed and then they'll get to read her opinions, and what I believe, and what I know is important, is that she doesn't change over the course of time -- and had I thought she would change, I wouldn't put her on there.
RUSH: Let me explain this "weakness comment," because, again, this is a comment made in the context of a remark I made last week. The remark I made last week, I forget specifically the issue about which I was speaking, but it's a philosophical comment. It's a bit of philosophy that I happen to believe, and it is this: that if you show weakness to your opponents, you encourage them. If you operate from a position of conviction and confidence and strength, then you have a little easier time dealing with your enemies, your opponents, or what have you -- and that's why I just don't like the idea of coming at anything from a position of weakness or a position of being on the defensive. I believe in total offense. We're winning. We won the elections in 2000 and 2004. We added to the majorities from 2000 to 2004, and there's every reason to come out here and be proud of who we are, and proud of what we stand for, and you heard the president say here, "There's not a lot of opinions for people to look at," which is what convinces me that the president here -- and I'm not saying that he personally is weak. I think the position of weakness is that he can't count on his own allies in the Senate for a protracted fight, so he comes up with a nominee that's a small target. There really is nothing anybody can say about her in terms of her opinions because she doesn't have any. She doesn't have any legal opinions that can focus on the special interest groups gonna have to drum up a bunch of stuff that, frankly, is going to offend people, i.e., she's a "lesbian," i.e., she "helped Bush get out of the National Guard."
Limbaugh then argues that the debate on culture of the Supreme Court would be a postive thing for America:
It's time to have the debate about where the Supreme Court's taking this country and how so many of the issues the court deals with end up being taken out of the legislative process in the arena of ideas and therefore out of the hands of the people. Yeah, as Justice Breyer said in his interview on Sunday: "The Constitution begins with 'we the people.'" Well, the way the court's going, it needs to be rewritten pretty soon, "We the Supreme Court," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that's not the way this should be!
I'm a firm believer -- and if you have listened to me for 18-plus years, you know this. I'm a firm believer that this country works best when as many citizens as possible participate from an informed and educated knowledge basis and vote on that basis. That's how you get legitimate majorities with mandates. That's how you elect people and give them the sense of strength to operate to implement that mandate on the issues that were articulated in the campaign. To be in the process of winning, to have this 40-, 50-year struggle, reach this point, and then still have to act defensive or stealth is a disappointing thing to me.
Here is what Rush wants America to understand about the current culture of the Supreme Court:
To give you an idea of the culture of the court, what I'm talking about, Justice Breyer. Justice Breyer is not just a vote. Look at what this man believes. He's writing a book. He believes that if there's a law on Mars that works here, we should think about it. He also said in his interview on Sunday (summarized), "Hey, you know, the Founding Fathers, they had no conception of television, and automobiles, and the Internet, and mass media. We can't go back to them.
"We can't go back to them and find out what they would have intended in this case via all these new developments that they couldn't even dream about. So we can't say original intent is the way to go. We have to be able to interpret the Constitution according to today's culture." No, no, no, Justice Breyer. See, that's an example of an out of control culture that's going to destroy the court and is not constitutional at all. The Founding Fathers were brilliant, my friends. This Constitution has held up and will hold up. That's the miracle of it. But what Justice Breyer apparently doesn't know is that the Founding Fathers allowed for just the very thing he's talking about via the amendment process. You can amend the Constitution but there's a way you do it. You amend it in one of two ways, but the one way you don't do it is have justices run off the reservation and decide they alone get to determine what the Founding Fathers meant, based on what they couldn't have known. They don't get to do that. But that's what they're doing. That's what I'm talking about the culture of the court. So it's one thing to have somebody that may vote the right way case after case, but what about the view of the court's role as a constitutional participant in our society, as one of the three branches?
Yes, its time ‘we the people’ take back America from the tyranny the liberals have created through the Supreme Court. Limbaugh made a great point regarding those who believe in a so-called living constitution. Amend it then. Do not allow nine Americans to undermine the original intent of the Founding Fathers. And if they do, it is our responsibility to impeach them.
