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RUSH: Here we go, heading off to a holiday weekend. Whether you are a Propane-American or a Charcoal-American, it’s the Fourth of July weekend, Independence Day, and of course the weekend news cycle has been sparked. I really hope you are not among these people that needs news to spark your Fourth of July weekend. I certainly don’t. I got a note from a friend today, “Oh, wow, boy, O’Connor is retiring! This is going to really spark up the weekend,” and my reply was, “I am fortunate I don’t need news to spark up my weekend.” Greetings, my friends, and welcome. It is the Rush Limbaugh program. It’s the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address is Rush@EIBnet.com. Yes, folks, Sandra Day O’Connor has split the scene. A lawyer has quit a court.

She’s on a plane to Minneapolis, it is said. She’s not even in town, yet all the news cameras are focused outside her vacant home, and all of this hysteria. This is going to go on all day long, and all of this hysteria? We don’t even have a nominee yet, and it’s breathless out there, this hysteria. One person, one lawyer, folks, has quit the Supreme Court — and look it, this is a great way to illustrate the point that a number of us have been trying to make for a few weeks now, months, even years on the whole concept of judicial activism, because this hysteria, this interest, this breathlessness, shows how a bunch of unelected judges have become the final authority in our country, and people crave a final authority, obviously. This illustrates it.

People want somebody that has all the answers, and unfortunately we have invested nine lawyers on the Supreme Court as the nine people who are unelected and unaccountable who have all the answers. We hear Sandra Day O’Connor today portrayed as a “swing vote,” proving that the US Supreme Court’s become a political institution and not a judicial one. What do you mean, swing vote? “What was her judicial philosophy?” She didn’t have a judicial philosophy. She was an activist. If the truth be known, a couple of quick points — and, you know, this is tough to do because everybody. This is the day she retires. She’s been there since ’81, Reagan nominated her July 7th in 1981, and of course somebody retires and leaves we’re full of plaudits for them, which is understandable, but it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get busy here. In my opinion — which is not so humble, ahem, ladies and gentlemen — Sandra Day O’Connor is precisely the kind of activist… Stand by on audio sound bite #4, and I’m going to prove this to you.

Sandra Day O’Connor is precisely the kind of activist who has done great damage to the institution of the judiciary. She was a predictable fifth vote for most of the court’s activist decisions, and by activist decisions I mean judges imposing their personal professional preferences rather than interpreting the Constitution. Activism is when you forget the Constitution and rewrite it according to your own personal policy preferences, and she was pretty reliable as a fifth vote in that regard. Yeah, she got it right now and then. She got it right on the eminent domain case recently. Maybe that’s why she got fed up and quit, who knows? She says it’s because her husband is ill, and she wants to spend time with him, which I believe.

We’ve heard the liberals say for months that “there are seven Republican justices,” which is meaningless. We have seven justices appointed by Republicans, but come on. The party affiliation is meaningless — and the liberals say, “Well, the court can’t be activist for this reason. Why, the Republicans have seven appointees there.” The issue is judicial philosophy. There is no longer any room for appointments that are PC or stealth or what have you. If we’re going to make even small strides in returning the court to its constitutional responsibilities, the place to start is with the appointment of a person who has a solid record of fidelity to the Constitution. You know who I nominate today? Janice Rogers Brown.

Put her on the court. “Rush, you can’t do that. Why, she was just sworn in to the DC Court of Appeals.” That’s exactly right! Put her on there! She’s just been through the confirmation hearings. Make the libs go and trounce her again. They delayed her for three years. Let’s see it all, folks. Put her up there. That’s the kind of person we need on this court. Sandra Day O’Connor has left. We need to replace her with a woman, woman of color, can’t be beat. It would help if she’d been an illegal immigrant, I know that, but she wasn’t.

Well, yeah, try to cover all the bases here as we pander with court nominations for votes. But really, in terms of fealty to the Constitution and somebody’s right: Janice Rogers Brown. Make the case today. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that she has to serve on the court of appeals for X-amount of time before she can be moved up. Edith Jones, another great conservative female, put her up there. Her or Janice Rogers Brown. Hubba hubba hubba. I’m for it, and let’s move on with it. If you want to know, if you’re sitting there saying, “Rush, I can’t believe how coarse and unfeeling and unkind you are. I mean this is the day of her retirement. Couldn’t you hold your powder until next week in being critical of Sandra Day O’Connor?” Uh, okay.

Well, let’s go to one of the liberal gods when it comes to these matters, the right honorable Laurence Tribe, of the Harvard Law Skrool. This morning during NBC News coverage with Brian Williams he spoke via phone, Williams spoke via phone, with Harvard University law Professor Laurence Tribe, and Brian Williams said, “While not always on the same side as Madam Justice O’Connor what is your reaction to the news this morning especially in light of all the rumors about the chief justice?”

TRIBE: My reaction is that we’ve been hit by a tsunami. She was central to the court not only because she was a centrist, but because her doctrines and her contributions, in terms of principle, as opposed to affirmative action decisions and decisions about religion, and to decisions about the role of the states in the national-state division of power. All of those contributions have been absolutely seminal.

RUSH: Okay, so you’ve got a liberal god, a liberal guru saying that this resignation hits them like a tsunami. They know how important this fifth activist vote is, folks, and you’ve seen so many 5-4 decisions in this court, and you’ll find Justice O’Connor right in there on that five side a whole bunch times joining the activists. You just do — and the libs know what they face. So the libs are going to suggest a “centrist, a moderate, somebody of the same temperament as O’Connor,” but it’s time to clean up this. You know, the left, it’s predictable what you’re going to hear. The left is going to argue that abortion rights will be in jeopardy, and, unfortunately (laughs) it’s not true. There are six justices who are solidly for abortion on demand, coordinated 1992 decision to reaffirm Roe vs. Wade so if you subtract Sandra Day O’Connor and even replace her with a pedal-to-the-metal conservative, it still leaves five, which is a majority. But even if Roe had been reversed there’s no reason to panic over this.

It simply means that Congress could pass statutes or the states could. There’d still be abortion in this country but there’d be a lot less argument about it. Abortion is legal in Great Britain but it was decided by the people, not nine lawyers who are unaccountable and unelected, and as such it’s far less controversial in Great Britain because the people always had a say in it and they had a say in it begin with. Justice O’Connor oftentimes was a politician in a black robe. She used her position to impose her views on the nation without the benefit of public input or an election — and you can say that about a number of the justices on the Supreme Court, not all of them, by any means. But here’s the best way, I think the best way to pose this to people is to simply ask you a question.

Do you, as a citizen of this country, do you have faith in representative government and your own right to vote and influence your government, or do you want to cede that power to a handful of lawyers? Because that’s what we’ve done. We have ceded our power to influence our government to a handful of lawyers — and this circus that’s going on today, and I’ve been waiting for it for this reason, is the greatest illustration. You’ve got one person, one lawyer retires, and we stop everything and focus on that one lawyer retiring, and who will be the next lawyer replacing this other lawyer because we crave a final authority, and we don’t reserve that authority for ourselves via our votes, via our representative government. We have ceded that authority to nine lawyers. Now, it’s obvious we crave an authority. All human beings want to know what’s right and what’s wrong, and we’ve ceded the definition of that to nine lawyers, so much so, particularly the left, so much so that when one of them quits, it’s panic time — and yet we are the people who elect our representatives.

We are the people who should and could influence the direction of our country and government. But, oh, no! Be it eminent domain, be it abortion, be it property rights, whatever it is, whatever nine lawyers say, we breathless await. But there are positive signs because now when these nine lawyers issue their commandments from On High, in certain sectors of our country and society, the people are saying, “No, that’s not right,” and are on track to doing something about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me give you another example of the breathless hysteria, the hopes and dreams of the liberal media, all wrapped up in the retirement of a lawyer. Audio sound bite #6, please. ABC News this morning, the host Bob Woodruff, not to be confused with Bob Woodward. This is Bob Woodruff. He’s talking to reporter, congressional reporter Linda Douglas. And Bob says, “Linda! (panting) Linda! (gasp!) Any signs of movement, Linda? (heaving) Can you — can you give us a sense of the strategy? I mean what’s — what’s going to happen there now, Linda?”

DOUGLAS: Well, the big issue here, there’s been a — there’s been a fight that the public may not be aware of all along, where the Republicans have been trying to change the rules to prevent the Democrats have using what’s called the filibuster, a long, long debate to block judicial nominations. That fight is going to be resurrected again. If the Democrats try to block any of the president’s nominees by using the filibuster, the majority leader is going to try to step forward and change those rules and that raises the stakes even higher. It could shut down the Senate.

RUSH: There’s been a fight the public may not be aware of? (laughs) It’s a big disconnect. It’s the Twilight Zone! “A fight that the public may not be aware of all along”? She’s just bringing back the whole specter of the judicial filibuster by the Democrats.

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