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RUSH: The Supreme Court’s gone. Even at eight members in a case like this, you count on Justice Kennedy to join ’em, the four libs. So you essentially have a 5-3 leftist court now.  But it’s not a court.  It is a partisan echo chamber of the Democrat Party or leftist agenda.  We have a Democrat nominee, Hillary, who’s wiped away — just erased — all objections to corruption as a disqualifying factor for Democrats. 

Democrats are making it clear they don’t care how corrupt their leaders are.  In fact, the more corrupt their leaders are — if it enables them to defeat us — the better.  So here’s to corruption.  If it takes corruption — if it takes all kinds of Clintons funny money, Clinton foundations — if it takes selling the White House and selling the presidency to foreign entities, fine, as long as that helps beat conservatives.  This wasn’t the case that long ago.  Budgets don’t mean anything anymore.  The debt doesn’t mean anything. 

The deficit, the national debt? None of it has any relevance!  None of it has any limiting meaning.  There is no responsibility whatsoever coming out of Washington when it comes to budgeting, when it comes to economics, when it comes to legislation. There isn’t any responsibility or even adult behavior coming out of that town.  Social Security and Medicare are racing to insolvency.  Public school bathrooms and how they are used became a presidential concern.  Voter ID, a way to ensure legitimacy at the polls, is considered unfair. 

Yeah, we can’t embark on any major step to ensure legality and fairness at the polls because it’s called racism and sexism and bigotry and everything else! The president enforces laws of his choosing in defiance of federal court and federal appellate court rulings, and if I understand the Supreme Court decision today on abortion, I guess back-alley abortions weren’t really a problem because all Texas did was try to enhance safety procedures for women who wanted to get abortions.  “No, no, no, no!” the left said.

“You are not gonna put any limit whatsoever, even if it means popularizing the equivalent of back-alley abortions.”  And I’m gonna tell you, folks, when it comes to abortion, yes, the substance of the issue matters. But beating us is just as motivating and just as important.  If you doubt me, listen to audio sound bite number one. It’s Jeffrey Toobin, legal beagle at CNN, who was asked by Jake Tapper today, “The Supreme Court could have divided 4-4. They could have kicked this back to the lower court.  That would have upheld the Texas law. But they staked out a stance on this, Jeffrey.”

TOOBIN:  As we have said so often, this decision was in the hands of Anthony Kennedy, who was the swing vote.  What makes this decision so significant is that after 2010 — after the Republican landslides and all the state legislatures — many states, not just Texas, passed restrictions that are very similar to these Texas rules. Louisiana, Mississippi. And so if the Supreme Court has now struck down these restrictions, it is very likely that other courts will strike down a variety of restrictions that Republican-dominated legislatures have passed since are left.

RUSH:  Don’t doubt me.  You hear that? Of all the things this guy could have said about this ruling, the substance, he didn’t even talk about it.  What did he talk about?  The crucial importance of this victory is how it thwarts the results of the 2010 Republican landslide midterm election victory.  That’s what’s important about it.  

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RUSH:  Here’s what the Texas law basically did that’s been struck down on abortion. But I’m telling you, as far as the left is concerned, the big deal here is that the meaning… One of the things that happened as the result of the 2010 Republican landslide has been beat-back.  Beating us is as big a deal to them.  This did not threaten abortion, but they believe any law — any law — that stands in the way of any abortion any time has got to be stopped because it’s a trend toward banning abortion. 

What would have happened here, Texas argued before the court, is that in its 2013 law and subsequent regulations were needed to protect women’s health.  The rules that Texas implemented required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.  And the law forced clinics to meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surge.  And the pro-aborts looked at this as efforts to limit abortion.  What they were, were efforts to make it safer.  To the extent that it might have limited abortion by eliminating certain clinics, yeah, you could see that, and that’s what the pro-aborts saw.

“No, no, no! We’re not gonna limit our clinics.  You’re not gonna shut us down no matter what goes on in there.  It doesn’t matter.  You are not gonna win! You’re not gonna have one win when it comes to abortion.  Abortion is constitutional, and we’re not gonna allow you one maneuver even if it is legitimately made to have qualified doctors and qualified outpatients.”  They don’t care.  Making sure the abortion happens is the nut of the political agenda.  And defeating us in the process is not just icing on the cake; it’s practically as important as the substance of the case. 

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RUSH:  No, I’m not exaggerating the Supreme Court decision here. That’s why I said, “Apparently back-alley abortions weren’t really a problem.”  Apparently abortuaries that are no better than veterinary clinics like Kermit Gosnell’s are apparently not a problem.  “You’re not gonna put any limits. You’re not gonna put safety standards. You’re not gonna do anything to our abortion clinics even under the guys of making it safe that might make it tougher to get an abortion. We’re not gonna allow it!” And that’s exactly what the court said. 

So the next to you hear ’em talking about… They’re not.  There just… This is filthy, is what it is.  You know what the grating thing is? These are the people who somehow get the credit for having all the compassion for their fellow human beings.  These are the people that get the credit for having so much love and tolerance, compassion, understanding.  They are brutal, these people on the left.  Now, get this, folks. We’re under assault. We’re under siege everywhere.  Richard Posner.  He may pronounce it “Pozz-ner;” there are two different pronunciations. 

Vladimir Posner, Soviet Union spokesman, friend of Phil Donahue, pronounced it “Pose-ner.”  This judge, he’s a Seventh Circuit judge, Richard Posner — appointed by Reagan; important to keep in mind here — “and has been alternately praised and condemned by judicial analysts.” This guy, Seventh Circuit judge Richard Posner, posted today a little article at Slate.com, saying that it’s time now that US judges stop studying the Constitution. 

The Constitution, as a reference point for the law, is outdated, past its time, unhelpful, and irrelevant.  He said in his post at Slate. “I see absolutely no value to a judge spending decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and it’s implementation.”  It’s only the official law of the land, and here’s a Seventh Circuit judge saying it’s worthless! 

It’s the law of the land. The amendments? Its implementation? It’s a waste of time even if you spend seconds studying it.  “‘Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century,’ he continued. ‘Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post-Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today.'” The story’s at Mediaite.  They conclude this with this paragraph: 

“Posner, an influential jurist who has served as a federal judge for thirty-five years, has previously voiced his disregard for the Constitution. “‘I’m not particularly interested in the 18th Century, nor am I particularly interested in the text of the Constitution. I don’t believe that any document drafted in the 18th century can guide our behavior today,’ he said during a 2015 colloquium.” He’s not a dumb guy by any stretch, but this presents a total misunderstanding of what the Constitution is.  It’s a profound distortion of what the Constitution is. 

This is stunning. 

The Constitution planted the roots of American exceptionalism — again, defined by the fact that America was the “exception” to the way and the rule of life for humanity centuries before.  The Constitution… Well, Magna Carta. Magna Carta. I guess we’d have to say Magna Carta was first, but the US Constitution was the first document to ever limit the government.  And that is why the opponents want to get rid of it, because it limits the government.  It does not empower government.  It empowers citizens.  It empowers individuals. 

The Constitution spends all of its time, the Bill of Rights, defining what the government cannot do.  And that just irritates people who think the government ought to be able to do anything and everything, because other people — average people — are not competent or qualified to make their own decisions. Or, it’s worse than that. It’s just people that are totally power mad and power hungry who doesn’t believe in representative government, do not believe in republics. 

But to say that the Constitution cannot guide our behavior today? It has successfully.  That’s one of the brilliant aspects of the document is it’s timelessness.  Really, the whole thing is a miracle.  The entire United States is a miracle, from the Pilgrims arrival to the drafting of the Declaration to the Revolutionary War, the whole thing’s a miracle.  And the drafting of the Constitution has never been done before and hasn’t been done since except in a copycat kind of way. 

largeBut there’s no value in studying its enactment, its amendments, its implications because what’s in it isn’t relevant to today? It’s the law of the land.  Anyway, this guy’s appointed by Reagan, and he’s been around for 35 years on the court, which just illustrates how people can lose their grounding.  It’s amazing.  This is the kind of thing, by the way, that’s gonna be latched onto.  There’s a whole movement on the left that agrees with this and that thinks the Constitution…

I’ve told you before, they call it “a charter of negative liberties.”  You know, when I first heard that, I said, “How can liberty be negative? What the hell does that mean?”  And it was insider lingo for leftists who think that the Constitution has negative liberties because it tells government what it can’t do, and that’s not good.  “We need something that spells out what the government can do, what the government will do, not what the government can’t do.” 

And it’s forever going to come under assault and attack in a variety of ways, and this is just most recent one.  

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RUSH: Adam in Charleston, South Carolina.  Great to have you with us today, sir.  Hello.

CALLER: (garbled) Hello, Rush.  First-time caller and longtime listener.  Could you explain to me without using the term “double standard” how our elected officials — our state legislators — trying to impose regulations to keep women safer get denied, yet nongovernment employees like the EPA impose sanctions and regulations on businesses, and they get put out of business all the time?

RUSH:  Well, honestly, I had very much trouble understanding what you said.  Not your fault.  It’s my cochlear implants and (impression of muffled audio).  That’s what you sound like.  I had to read what you said, so I’m a little behind.  I think what you’re asking me is, how is it that some Texas state officials will pass a legitimate law guaranteed or designed to make abortion safer and Supreme Court comes along and says, “No way, no how! You can’t do that. It’s unconstitutional. Screw you!” 

Meanwhile, over here, the EPA can write whatever regulations it wants outside of any congressional action and it becomes law and can never be challenged, right?  If that’s the question, it’s a great question; it’s a great illustration of exactly what kind of things we’re up against.  The EPA is not the only bureaucracy doing these kinds of things, issuing… The number of regulations that come out of the Obama administration, folks, are in the tens of thousands. 

It’s gotten to the point where it may be impossible for an average citizen to go through the day without violating some federal law or regulation.  There are that many of them.  Now, I’m gonna give you a generic answer to how come the EPA can do this.  It’s not complicated to explain.  But apparently it’s very, very hard to do.  The Constitution has this thing in it called separation of powers.  You see, the Founders distrusted all power in the hands of a single person or entity, so they divided the government up into three branches. 

You had the courts over here called the judiciary.  Then you had the executive branch, which is the president and his cabinet, which includes a Department of Justice and the national security apparatus and the military.  And it now includes things like Homeland Security and whatever presidents have created in the process.  OSHA was created by Richard Nixon, for example, and EPA was created by Richard Nixon.  It was not part of the founding.  They were political constructs. 

In Nixon’s case he was trying, I think, show liberals he wasn’t a bad guy by giving them things that they liked.  Didn’t work.  They hated him.  They were never gonna stop hating him.  And then they had the legislative branch, which is House and the Senate.  Now, the founders knew that there was gonna be a never-ending fight for federal power.  It’s why they divided it up three ways.  But they were smart. They were students of history, and they knew that all presidents would try to eventually become kings. 

They knew that every member of Congress would want to become president.  They were very wary of what judges would do.  So they put limits.  The simple answer to your question is: If you want to stop the EPA from writing regulations that become law, Congress has to stand up and protect its turf.  Congress has to call the EPA in and tell the administrator that the last 10,000 regulations are defunct and unconstitutional because they didn’t go through Congress — and if you don’t like it, eat it! 

If Congress isn’t willing to protect its turf, Adam, then the president will be able to walk all over them, and the judiciary will be able to walk all over ’em. The president and his cabinet will be able to walk all over ’em.  It’s no more complicated than that.  I mean, that’s the cure for it.  The Constitution was brilliant in this way.  It set up all kinds of obstacles.  It built gridlock into the system, for crying out loud.  Gridlock is heralded as one of these horrible things because it stops government from making laws. 

No. 

Gridlock is a godsend.  Gridlock is the thing that stands in the way of government growing inexorably and unstoppably.  They built the Senate and designed the Senate to act slowly.  The Senate is there to practically shut down every piece of legislation that comes out of the House.  Every spending bill. By virtue of the Constitution, every penny that is spent in this country must first be authorized by the House of Representatives, and the committee that does that is Ways and Means — and if Congress doesn’t authorizes the spending, it can’t happen. 

So if a renegade agency of the executive branch starts spending money… It’s got a budget. If it starts spending money or doing this or that that has not been authorized, it’s up to Congress to stand up and say, “You can’t do it.”  It’s like anything else.  If the cops aren’t gonna chase criminals, they’re gonna get away with it.  If when we catch criminals, we don’t put ’em in jail for whatever reason, they’re gonna keep getting away with it, they’re gonna get away with it.

If we’re not allowed to catch criminals because of stupid things like “profiling,” they’re never gonna get caught in the first place.  So if Congress wants to rein in all these out-of-control bureaucracies, they could do it.  I’m sure if I had a member here they’d tell me, “Yeah, yeah. Theoretically you’re right, Mr. Limbaugh. But in practice it would be very, very difficult.  There would be all kinds of retribution.”  I’m sure there would be.  None of this is supposed to be easy. 

But all of this, Adam, is about power. Every single shred of this is about power and the quest for it.  That’s another aspect of brilliance in the Constitution.  It is to limit that power residing in the federal government.  And the federal government as constituted today is led by people who want to rip the Constitution to shreds and either just dispose of it or rewrite it, granting them the power they don’t have now. And in lieu of that, they’re acting as though they do.

And when you have the House of Representatives telling the president, “Sir, we’re not going to stop you on the budget.  If you want a budget, we’ll give you what you want because we don’t want to harm our candidate in this year’s campaign for the presidency. And, Mr. President, because of your race we’re not gonna ever bring impeachment charges.”  Well, if you’re a president subsumed with quest for power, you have just been given blue skies and green lights the likes of which a Congress has never before granted an executive. 

Why would Obama stop? 

“Well, because, Rush, he’s a great American. He’s a patriot. He’ll realize here what’s going on.  He ought not take advantage of it and have a respect for the rule of law.”  Respect for the rule of law? Who are we talking about here?  We’re talking about statist, socialist, Big Government, liberal Democrats who have just been given blue skies and green lights for the rest of his term, and he got it two years ago! Why would he stop?  Same thing with the IRS.  The IRS should not be able to penalize any Tea Party group simply because of politics.

But they will if nobody stops ’em.  And the rule of law, if it ceases to exist, is not gonna stop ’em.  The piece of paper the Constitution’s written on is not gonna stop ’em.  It takes somebody blocking ’em and tackling ’em.  And if you don’t have the appetite for it, then it’s gonna continue to happen.  Meanwhile, the people see all this and they’re livid.  They want it stopped.  Because all these EPA regulations and all this other caca coming out of Congress is doing nothing but making it harder and harder and harder to simply earn a living, much less achieve the American dream. 

They want it stopped.  They want this stuff all taken out of their way.  Some do.  Hopefully still most.  But if the Congress — and this is not an attack on this current one per se.  Theoretically, if Congress is not going to stop the executive branch from trying to take its power away, the executive branch is gonna keep taking its power away.  It’s human nature. 

I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who wants power over other people.  I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who wants to amass power at your job or in your family, but rest assured people who do are everywhere, and many of them are in government, and it’s the sole reason they’re there.  The Constitution be damned.  With the amount of money this government collects because of the vast economy of this nation, you are talking about trillions and trillions of dollars, and where does it all end up?  In Washington, DC at something called the Department of the Treasury and at the Federal Reserve in their banks. 

But theoretically it’s all in Washington.  That’s where the collection agency is. That’s where the people who authorize its taxation and spending are, and so that’s where you want to be if you want your share of it.  And that is a microcosm of exactly what’s happening now.  Go to the Washington, you’ll find the unemployment’s rate’s 3%. You’ll find the per capita income in Washington and the surrounding area dwarfs anywhere else in the country outside of the Hamptons and Beverly Hills and San Francisco and other sufficient places, but it’s right up there. 

They are experiencing no immigration problems in Washington or surrounding environs.  They are certainly not experiencing any unemployment.  They’re not seeing their wages decline.  They’re seeing, in fact, record amounts of money being collected to be fought over and distributed and used for whatever purposes necessary to acquire and gain even more power.  And if those who are constitutionally mandated, as the House of Representatives and the Senate are, with a certain amount of constitutional power, if they’re not gonna stand up and protect it, then you’re gonna have an out-of-control agency like the EPA with impunity pretending that it writes laws. 

Meanwhile, everybody else obeying the law, following the legislative route, here comes the Supreme Court, they also have become totally politicized now.  The Supreme Court’s not a judicial body anymore; it’s a rubber stamp for the Democrat Party.  There are four liberal judges, now five with Kennedy, for all intents and purposes, and they are there for one reason:  not to study the cases and make the ruling based on law.  They are there to rubber stamp whatever — and they all know — the left-wing agenda demands case by case by case. 

In the abortion case, the word has gone out even though it doesn’t need to go out, they all instinctively know this, there will not be one law, there will not be one regulation, there will not be one rule permitted that is seen to make abortion more difficult to have or be performed.  Ergo, Texas comes along and says, you know what, we’re gonna not allow abortion clinics that are no better than veterinary clinics — no offense, veterinarians — we’re not gonna allow these unhygienic, filthy, dirty clinics to exist. 

There are gonna have to be some standards. There are gonna have to be some post-op standards. People that work in there are gonna have to have admission eligibility for hospitals. The Supreme Court came along, no, you are not gonna do that, Texas, because that might make it harder for our constituents to get an abortion, which is all that matters.  Plus we love sticking it to you, so (raspberry) you.  And that’s how it all happens. 

If the people madly in the quest for power are not stopped in that quest or if they are not competed against for it, what do you think is going to happen?  Look, you all instinctively know it.  That is why you’re so angry at the Republican Party, pure and simple.  

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