RUSH: Look, I don’t want sound like a National Honor Society candidate. I’m not trying to sound naive here, folks. But this Pew poll today and the Washington Post poll that shows that massive amounts of Democrats totally support the Obama spying programs, and Steny Hoyer out there saying it’s so much better than it was under Bush. John Bolton says, look, all three branches signed off on this.

Now, all three branches signed off on it. I’m sorry. In my mind — and I’m sorry to be naive — that doesn’t make it legal. All three branches signed off on the internment of the Japanese during World War II. Did that make it legal? I mean everybody knew that was happening, the courts knew it, FDR did it, the Congress knew. Well, was it legal? Was it legal and just not right? Or was it legal? All it means is — and I love John Bolton. I have an incredible amount of respect for John Bolton. But all three branches signing off — this is the most massive amount of spying and data collection ever. It’s happening in the midst of news stories of how this administration is openly targeting for punishment its political enemies. I’m sorry, that’s not in a vacuum.

There’s a context here. It matters who’s collecting this data. It’s all about the potential for abuse. Anything can be abused. That’s why it’s so important who we elect to high office. This is why character mattered so much to the Founders. It’s why we ought to do everything we can within our realm of ability to do so to elect trustworthy people, and we haven’t been doing that lately. How in the world, in the midst of what we know this regime was doing with the IRS and how they’ve tried to cover up what happened in Benghazi. Four Americans died in Benghazi, and they blamed some little video maker, some pathetic little video maker, who’s still in jail somewhere in a dungeon in Texas without bail on some bank fraud charge.

I mean, using the old adage intelligence guided by experience, there are reasons for red flags all over the place about this, and I’m sorry, the fact that three branches signed off on it doesn’t make it legal. It just means consensus. Yeah, consensus, just means they’re all in on it. But just because they’re all in on it doesn’t make it legal. How about amnesty? They’re all gonna be in on that. They’re gonna have the courts, they’re gonna say fine, if ever gets to ’em, you’re gonna have the legislative branch get the ball rolling, Obama’s gonna sign it, all three branches gonna sign off on it, is it legal? Well, yeah, you could say that we have the provision in the law for granting amnesty to people, but is it right just because three branches sign off on it?

It seems to me that we are in the midst of really lowering our standards here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: James in Toronto. Have a little over a minute. I wanted to get to you. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush, it’s Jason in Toronto. I want to thank you, sir, on behalf of millions of Canadians and hundreds of millions around the world, your allies thank you so much for everything you’ve done for decades, sir.

RUSH: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

CALLER: From the bottom of my heart. I want to say, sir, very quickly, this is a big conspiracy theory — maybe it’s for a midnight show and not a respected show like yours — but do you think perhaps Obama, they’re leaving a bad taste with this NSA in people’s mouth so that people will want to get rid of it so that many of his allies, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Marxists, the militant Islamists, they are not going to be watched as much because this will be taken away. Do you think this is —

RUSH: Let me tell you something.

CALLER: — sort of part of the plan?

RUSH: I love midnight hours being discussed from noon to three. Did you catch that? “This is something for the midnight shows but I want to bring it up.” Is this a plan to do away with and limit surveillance of groups like Occupy Wall Street? No. I don’t believe that any aspect of this has been made public for the purposes of getting rid of it. That’s not gonna happen. If Occupy Wall Street gets caught, you just let ’em go, like the New Black Panthers.