RUSH: John Roberts. Judge Roberts. I want to tell you, there are two things at work here. One of them — both of them, actually — I mentioned yesterday. The Democrats are having a tough time, and they are going to have an impossible time, to oppose the man on anything having to do with any kind of substance. I want to make a prediction. In fact, I made the prediction to people last night and it’s already come true so you may have heard about it before I made the prediction. But I think what they are going to do, as I said last night, what they are going to do is try to derail the guy at the hearings on the basis of, “He won’t answer our questions,” and, they’re going to ask for documents when he was at the solicitor general’s office, and they are going to ask for documents that they are not entitled to have on the basis of the separation of powers.
The SG’s office will not turn them over and we’ll be stuck where we were with Miguel Estrada and John Bolton. The Democrats will say, “We can’t go forward with this. What are they hiding? All we want to do is see what he thought during the pieces. We don’t have much on record of Judge Roberts. This will give us an idea of what he is thinking. The White House is refusing to turn this over. Why, what are they trying to hide?” Blah, blah, blah. Keep a sharp eye out for that. There is another thing. Linda Greenhouse — I told you yesterday, she is the Supreme Court supreme writer at the “Pinch” Times, the New York Times — and lo and behold! I told you yesterday. I told you yesterday that one of the problems going to have with this guy is he is big in the DC social circuit. He has given his phone number to journalists. They can reach him. He doesn’t hide. He doesn’t hibernate. He runs around. He’s not a social butterfly, don’t misunderstand, but you know, he’s not a hermit. He doesn’t avoid these people like Clarence Thomas or “Nino” — as he is now popularly known by his friends — Scalia.
Lo and behold, here comes Linda Greenhouse with pieces of New York Times talking about how, well, this Roberts guy gets out and there is going to be a chance to influence him and have him grow. She doesn’t say it this way. You’ve gotta know New York Times code to translate this from her story. But there are many people think that’s what happened to Anthony Kennedy. He grew, that he became friends with the DC culture. He became concerned about what they write about him and his conservative views somewhat moderated and his liberal views grew — and the New York Times is throwing the first little temptation, if you will, to Judge Roberts with the Linda Greenhouse piece. “In the meantime, less than 15 hours after President Bush announced that John Roberts will be his nominee, leading Democrats stood before a bank of TV cameras and criticized the president. Their ire had nothing to do with Roberts. Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Jane Harman, assail Bush for failing to punish Karl Rove for his alleged involvement in disclosing the name of the CIA operative.
Roll Call says in a set of talking points, issued Wednesday morning, the Senate Democratic Leadership urged rank and file senators to continue spotlighting Rove’s involvement in the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plames’ identity. ‘A Supreme Court nominee will not distract the country from growing credibility problems at the White House,’ Democrats were told to say and echo.” You heard the talking points. They’re all saying that. Dingy Harry, yesterday, complained. He wagged his finger at reporters saying, “You’re going to put Rove back on the front page. You can’t let Rove off this easy,” blah, blah, blah.
They’re so pathetic. They’re just so pathetic. I just saw something. Where is it? Where is it? I’ll have to find it. “Battered-Left Syndrome.” Somebody sent me a note, “There’s a new syndrome: Battered-Left Syndrome. It’s sort of like battered-wife syndrome. They keep getting beat up and still hang around the people that beat them up, and no one can figure why they just don’t leave and change.” They have battered-left syndrome out there, folks, and I think I’m one of the batterers! That is why I feel honored to have this new syndrome named out there. I’ll have to get the name of the guy who did it. Battered-left syndrome. They just keep punishing themselves, and they come back and they encourage more punishment or incur more punishment — and they keep doing it in the same way. They’re not surprising anybody, anymore. If you want to give them a football team analogy — and by the way, speaking of football, I’m going to miss Teddy Bruschi not playing this year. Teddy Bruschi of the New England Patriots. He had a mile stroke in January not long after the Pro-Bowl, and all the news accounts call Teddy Bruschi “the heart and soul of Patriot defense,” and he’s all that but he’s more as well. If you can be more than the heart and soul, he is. He’s a great player. He doesn’t just provide inspiration. He is a great player and makes great plays in big games.
They’re going to miss Teddy Bruschi. But you can understand it: a mild stroke, sitting out a year. He’ll still be with the team and offering encouragement and practice, and acting as a coach primarily. But it’s too bad, scary. These are people in the prime of physical condition, in their 30s — and, have a mild stroke like that. But the football analogy would be: These guys do not have the forward pass. All they’ve got is the off-tackle play and they run it every play, everybody knows what’s coming. They know where to stack the hole. (laughing) Just, you know, “Push them back! Push them back! Far back!” (laughing) They’re about to be ready to be pushed back into their fourth or fifth safety. They just keep coming in the same way and they’re getting beaten up — and it’s battered-left syndrome. Let’s give you examples. Let’s go to the audio tape. Last night, PMSNBC Hardball, David Gregory — really in a foul humor lately because Bush is outfoxing him and everybody else in the media — talking to Katrina vanden Heuvel. Katrina the editor of the left-wing, underground rag called The Nation — and also Terry Jeffrey of Human Events is on there, and David Gregory says to Katrina vanden Heuvel, “Where is Roberts’ vulnerable to the opposition?”
VANDEN HEUVEL: I want to take it out of the left-right context for a moment, if I might, because what I think what’s going to happen with the court is not so much moving right. I think it’s moving backwards. I think that is the frame so many Americans may not articulate but feel, because the civilizing decisions of the last 70 years whether in equal rights, in environmental rights reproductive rights, (voice quivering) workers’ rights, may well be rolled back — and I think certainly, on Roe v. Wade, he is going to be questioning tough ways — aaand in the excessive deference to executive power, at a time when I believe many Americans are worried about checks and balances, and overweening power in extraordinarily dominating GOP party [sic].
RUSH: Could there be a more out-of-touch person that they could get to go be on TV to represent the left? I’ve never heard somebody so out of touch with reality. The court moving backwards? Court moving backwards! I guess it depends on your perspective but what in the world does a liberal have to complain about with the Supreme Court? Katrina, if it weren’t for the court, you wouldn’t have half the things you think are important in this country. People wouldn’t vote for ’em if they had a chance. The court’s the only way you’ve gotten half of the stuff that’s perverted this society. To sit there and think the frame that so many Americans not articulate, the court’s moving backwards? The American people as expressed in polls are worried about the judicial branch’s overreaching power. There is no separation of power between the Executive Branch and the Judicial and Legislative. It’s all assumed by you in the left that the Supreme Court is the final authority anywhere, and you guys are going to have to make up your minds about judicial review. You either like it or you don’t.
Here, once again, she’s worried about whether or not the new court with this new horrible man, Judge Roberts — (whispering) probably personally selected by Karl Rove — is going roll back environmental rights, equal rights, reproductive rights, workers’ rights, every right, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the left’s rights, all this sort of stuff. Well, wait a minute! You guys keep saying that you want judicial review. You want the court to be able to determine what is constitutional and what isn’t — except when you don’t control it, you don’t want that. Like if you were consistent with this, if you are really worried about judicial review, then you got to go back and bring back Dred Scott to life — if the court can’t overturn itself, if the court can’t say that something’s unconstitutional and reverse a law of Congress. I guess it can only do those things when the left has the court in its control.
But this is, folks, this is hieroglyphics . This is verbal hieroglyphics trying to translate this. This is the best I can do. Even if you look at pre-vacancy polls before O’Connor retired, the vast majority of the American people want somebody like John Roberts on the court — and Miss vanden Heuvel as a typical elitist says the American people don’t know what they want because they’re too stupid to know what we want — that is why we at the Nation are trying to tell them every day. But how many people subscribe and read that? If it weren’t for Yahoo putting it around in their RSS, 90% of the people see the Nation, wouldn’t see it — and I’m not sure how many people see it then. Here is more kook stuff by the way. One more bite from Madam vanden Heuvel.
The question here from David Gregory, “What this selection tells us about George W. Bush — the president, even the man — seems to me, Katrina, the president had this all set up in the very beginning which is, they sort of put out there that they want to make this about qualifications. They’re daring the other side to challenge ideology using the Ginsburg model saying, ‘Look, she was a liberal but she qualified, she sailed through the confirmation process.’ What are your thoughts on this?” My first thought would be: “What’s the question, Gregory?” but Katrina doesn’t care what the question is. Here’s her answer.
VANDEN HEUVEL: I see something different. I see a maaan in Bush who is not…
RUSH: (gagging)
VANDEN HEUVEL: …ummm…
RUSH: A-hem!
VANDEN HEUVEL: He’s a divider.
RUSH: A-hem!
VANDEN HEUVEL: But I also see someone who, again —
RUSH: (coughing)
VANDEN HEUVEL: — wants to accrue as much power in the Executive Branch as he possibly can.
RUSH: (scoffs)
VANDEN HEUVEL: I refer back to this decision in the DC Circuit court last week, Judge Roberts basically! violating Sandra Day O’Connor —
RUSH: Ooooooooooooooooooh!
VANDEN HEUVEL: — that war is not a blank slate for this president.
RUSH: Oh, stop the tape! I told you that’s the next thing they’re going to go after. I told you yesterday. They are going to go after him on this decision that overruled a Clinton judge who had said that these military tribunals were unconstitutional, basically usurping the power of the Constitution granted the commander-in-chief. So they’re going to go after this guy for participating in that — unanimous decision, by the way. Here’s the rest of the bite, but I’m going to answer Gregory’s question here after Katrina muddles her way through the rest of her answer.
VANDEN HEUVEL: And he wants a court that’s going to defer to him, just as he wants a media who will defer to him – and I would not, I would ask people to remember that Judge Roberts privately adviiiiised Governor Jeb Bush in 2000 in the recount about ways to overturn the, uhhh, to overturn the courts taking it to the floor of the legislature.
RUSH: Stop the tape! This is about to drive me nuts! The courts in Florida were rewriting election law, Katrina without the legislature having been involved. If you look at the Constitution, the Florida Supreme Court nor any other state Supreme Court determines the electors from a state! The legislature, the state legislature does this. If Roberts was advising anybody here, Jeb Bush, it was how to get around a rogue, out-of-control Florida Supreme Court which was rewriting “What’s a Chad? What’s not a Chad? What’s a hanging Chad? What’s a leading Chad?” This is amazing. Here. The answer to the question is — Here’s the question: “What this election tell us about George W. Bush — the president, even the man — seems to me the president had this all set up in the very beginning, which is, they sort of put out there that they want to make this about qualification…” Mr. Gregory, go check with your buddy Howard Fineman.
Howard Fineman swerves into the truth yet again in a piece at MSNBC today. You know why Bush keeps confounding you, Mr. Gregory and all the rest of you in the media? Because he’s honest! All he’s doing is what he said he was going to do. You keep looking for deceit because that is who you are used to covering: politicians that deceive you — and in some cases you marvel at how they are able to do it — such as Bill Clinton. You never thought Clinton was telling you the truth when he said anything. So consequently, you don’t think any politician that is good tells the truth! Well, Bush said, “I’m going to pick this kind of person. I’m going to pick this kind of guy. I’m going to pick this kind of woman.” He did! They’re wondering what the trick is. How did Bush sandbag them? Tell you what, folks, it is a pretty sorry situation in the media when you can trick them by telling them the truth.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I listen to Katrina vanden Heuvel or any of the other liberals, and I just have this question: Why do they lie about what they really believe? Why do they pretend to care about individual rights? All this workers’ rights, this rights, that rights. They care about government. They support government by judiciary, folks. They’re not worried of workers’ rights, civil rights, this right. They’re worried about abortion rights, but that’s about it. All this other stuff is camouflage. They believe in government by judiciary. In essence they support government by five-or-six unelected lawyers as long as they are activist liberals. Now she won’t say that, but that’s what she supports and that’s what she is afraid of losing as Bush nominates Roberts and others to the court. Their new hero, by the way, Sandra Day O’Connor? Sandra Day O’Connor agrees with Roberts on his decisions in many, many cases. I mean, I think these people are so inconsistent that they… Well, it is like battered-lib syndrome, battered-left syndrome. It is like, “Here I have this baseball bat”
“Oh, good I want you to hit me again! Here I come.”
Whack!
I know it sounds violent, folks, I don’t mean it in a literal sense, but they are battered around here and they don’t know it, and they keep coming back for more.
Read the Articles…
(NY Times: Bush’s Supreme Court Choice Is a Judge Anchored in Modern Law)
(NYT: An Interview by, Not With, the President)
Headline: Battered-Left Syndrome
Subheadline: We are in a war, like it or not.
Source: National Review Online
By: Ted Lapkin
Date: July 21, 2005
The aftermath of the London terrorist bombings has demonstrated that the antiwar Left is severely afflicted by the political equivalent of battered-wife syndrome. With each new beating, the scarred and bruised victims of spousal abuse tend to excuse and rationalize the actions of their tormentors. A stubborn unwillingness to accept the proposition that their partners are violent louts plunges these woeful women into a morass of self-deception that spawns only further violence.
The far Left has similarly proved unable to liberate itself from the web of rose-tinted delusions that it has spun about the nature of Islamic extremism. After each al Qaeda outrage, leftist ideologues are quick to castigate their own countrymen for a catalogue of sins, both real and imagined. With a perverse combination of self-loathing and adoration of the enemy, the radical Leftist mantra preaches that if only we were nicer, the jihadists could not fail to love us. It’s our own fault if Osama bin Laden doesn’t realize what good people we are.
And all the while, these “progressive” academics, pundits, and politicians engage in ridiculous intellectual contortions designed to mitigate the guilt of the terrorist perpetrators. When push comes to shove, some intellectuals believe that Islamism is simply an understandable reaction to what they describe as “Western imperialism.”
The streets of Britain’s capital city were still damp with innocent blood when the same obscene dance of political self-flagellation began. Within hours of the explosions on the Underground, author Tariq Ali was blaming these attacks on George Bush and Tony Blair. The architects of the London bombings were exercising their just entitlement to vengeance for the “violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world,” he wrote.
Journalist Robert Fisk rushed to sing from the same song-sheet in the left-wing British daily The Independent. “It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s ‘war on terror,'” Fisk thundered. The true arch-terrorists of our time, he argued, could be found in the White House and 10 Downing Street.
And if the causes of Islamist terrorism were being falsely diagnosed by leftist ideologues, then the policy proposals being advanced by these same voices were morally bankrupt as well. Rather than pursue the fanatics had who visited such death upon the innocent of London, George Galloway, a radical member of Parliament, urged Britain to adopt the Spanish model of crumpling under pressure.
After a terrorist attack last year on Madrid’s rail system, Spain’s socialist government withdrew its troops from Iraq. But Prime Minister Jose Zapatero’s capitulation did not remove Spain from al Qaeda’s target list. In mid-June 2005, CNN reported that 16 members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s network were arrested in Madrid while planning additional terrorist attacks against that city.
On September 11, Americans became aware that they were facing a war against an enemy of a kind they had never before encountered. And through bombings, decapitations, and assassinations it has dawned upon other democratic nations that, like it or not, they too are part of this same conflict.
Our enemies go by such names as al Qaeda, Jamaa Islamiya, Hamas, and Hezbollah. They belong to a global jihadist movement that considers it a religious duty to wage holy Islamic war against the infidels of the West.
This is a war that we did not start, but that we dare not leave unfinished. We dare not because our foes are fanatics who strap explosives to their bodies and fly airliners into office buildings. We dare not leave it unfinished because our antagonists see the destruction of our civilization as a necessary precursor to the expansion of their own culture.
Our jihadist enemies are fighting to create an ideal society that looks a lot like Afghanistan under the Taliban. And this is a vision that is repugnant to the foundational ideals of free people everywhere. Women forced to be barefoot, burka-clad, illiterate, and unemployed. Christians and Jews barely tolerated as second-class dhimmicitizens. No art, no science. Societies dominated by poverty, oppression, backwardness, and ignorance.
In the world according to radical Islam it’s the jihadist way or the highway, and these 7th-century dogmas represent the only acceptable outcome to al Qaeda.
But the far-left views the world through a political prism that distorts this essential reality. Fixated by a knee-jerk hostility towards all things American, the likes of Ali, Fisk, and Galloway refuse to recognize the existence of this conflict, much less the stakes that are involved. Their primal instinct is to appease bin Laden and his cohorts rather than oppose them.
But Winston Churchill defined an appeaser as “someone who feeds the crocodile in the hopes of being eaten last.” The sooner we accept the fact that this is a war; then the sooner we can get about the task of winning it.
— Ted Lapkin is director of policy analysis at the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), a Melbourne think tank.