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RUSH: There are two things out there that I want to address today that both come under the umbrella of media bias. We’ve now learned that an aide in Mel Martinez’s office wrote this memo that supposedly was circulating on the Senate floor. There’s no proof of that. A lot of Republican senators say they never even saw this memo. This aide to Mel Martinez, new senator from Florida, has been fired or resigned or what have you, and the media is just going ape. They’re going bananas. This is payback for Dan Rather. This is payback for those sports memos. This is payback for a whole bunch of things, but what is missing in this? What is missing? The element of selective outrage. I’m not sure that I would have forced the guy to quit. I’m not sure that I would have hid this. What was wrong with this? What’s wrong with the Republicans having political strategy sessions? They didn’t in this case, but even if they had, so what? We’re talking about saving a woman’s life! How in the world is having a political strategy session about that something to be ashamed of and something to cower from? But nevertheless political pressures being what they are, the aide is gone. Martinez has apologized and that’s that.
Has everybody forgotten all of the memos the Democrat Senate judiciary committee staffers wrote and circulated among all the Senate Democrats on the judiciary committee about how they had to defeat black and Hispanic and extremist judges for political reasons, not because of their judicial qualifications or lack thereof, but for political reasons? Remember how those notes came to be discovered. Some Republican staffer ran into him. He was accused of hacking the Democrat computer. Turns out that wasn’t the case, but everybody then focused on, “How did that Republican get that memo?” rather than the contents of these Senate memos, rather than the contents of the memos which clearly spelled out a Democrat political strategy to destroy the character, the reputations and careers of a bunch of Bush judicial nominees, Hispanics, and blacks, and a female in one case. Nobody focused on the political intent and strategery in those memos. All the media cared about was how did that memo get out. Who found that memo? And the guy, the Republican — I forget whose office he worked in — he was sent packing too. So we have had two Republican aides resign over these two things. Meanwhile, the Senate Democrat staffers who wrote these memos and the Senate Democrats on the judiciary committee who used these memos get way scot-free in terms of any media interest.
The second item, this DeLay business yesterday it was a media frenzy. It goes on today. I did exhaustive research, ladies and gentlemen. I have found a story from 2003 in the Los Angeles Times that discusses some of the family members and friends of Harry Reid who are given all kinds of plum pork projects that make DeLay look like a choirboy. Now, I will admit that it ran in 2003 in the LA Times but it stopped in 2003 at the LA Times. It didn’t make it beyond the LA Times and nobody cared a whit about it. It’s a very long story. I have it here. I’ve underlined the crucial aspects of it. But when it was about Harry Reid. He was number two or number three in the Senate at the time. He wasn’t a leader of the Democrats in the Senate at the time. But I don’t remember this story, I didn’t see it when it first came out, but I found it. Had some interesting search terms, “Reid and corruption,” “Reid and pork,” Reid and this, and it came up with a story. Corruption is not in the story. It wasn’t the search term that worked, but nevertheless I found it — and I’m telling you, there was no outrage. There was no media focus on, “What’s Harry Reid doing?” No target, no accusation of ethics violations or any of the sort, and what Reid did makes DeLay, as I say, look like a choirboy.
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RUSH: All right, we’re going to go to the audio sound bites. We’re going to start with Harry Reid and we’ll have a bite from Ron Brownstein of the LA Times following that. In the first bite here, this is yesterday at a judges’ rally on the steps of the Supreme Court. Isn’t it interesting the Democrats always go to the steps of somewhere? They go to FDR statue; they go to the steps of the Supreme Court and they carry their willing accomplices and sycophants in the media right along with them to get their word out, so this is at a rally, and, now, this is about Republican “arrogance of power” and the “nuclear option” to end these judicial filibusters, and Dingy Harry sees fit to bring Tom DeLay into this.
REID: The truth is, the nuclear option is a result of the Republican leadership’s arrogancy [sic — arrogance] of power. If they don’t want — get what they want, what do they doooo? Change the rules! We’ve seen a leader in the House of Representatives who was censured three times in one year. He’s not going to be censored [sic — censured] again? Why? They changed the rules. The sad part about it, what has taken place in the House they’re now bringing to the Senate. Senate Democrats are the last thing standing between President Bush and total power. If Republics [sic — Republicans] can silence we Democrats in the Senate, their power will be unchecked.
RUSH: Yeah, right, Dingy Harry! This is utter panic, and it’s just out and out lies at the same time. The Democrats themselves have sought to change the filibuster rules. You know who used the filibuster most often and the Republicans tried to stop it at a crucial time in our history, was the Democrats in the civil rights debates. Democrats were trying to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act, folks. I know everybody thinks Democrats are the ones that got this passed. A greater percentage of Republicans in the Senate supported the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats, and Democrats controlled the Senate in those days. They were filibustering the Civil Rights Act, and they did all kinds of rules maneuvers and so forth. In fact, bottom line of this is, is that the technique the Republicans are thinking of using was first used by “Sheets Byrd” from West Virginia. This is not something the Republicans have concocted. You know, Sheets Byrd and the Democrats are on both sides of this filibuster thing. It is they, ladies and gentlemen, when they don’t get what they want, they change the rules. They incorporate new procedures that have never been used before as a means of getting what they want.
They’re the ones that are used to getting what they want! The whole problem with Dingy Harry is these guys are losing elections and they’re in the minority, and yet they think they still ought to be able to run the show nevertheless. They think 45 senators ought to be all you need to get what you want in the United States Senate. It doesn’t work that way, Dingy Harry. You’re losing elections. You don’t have the power of the majority. I’m getting so fed up with all these “rights of the minority” talk that we hear and the “power of the minority,” “fairness of the minority.” Don’t misunderstand. I’m not for discrimination, ladies and gentlemen, but I’m also concerned about the rights of the majority, in a duly constituted people’s house, House of Representatives and the US Senate, majorities matter. Now, let’s stick with DeLay here. This is amazing. This is — this is Brownstein. He’s on CNN American Morning today, and they say to him, DeLay told CNN that it’s really liberal media that’s out to get him. What’s going on here was a concerted effort to twist the truth and make it look seedy. I want you to listen to Brownstein’s analysis of DeLay’s situation.
BROWNSTEIN: That’s probably why the — the charges so far are not sufficient to cause Republicans, uh, to break from him, because it’s more a difference of perhaps degree than of kind, uh, with other members. Uh, certainly the conservatives will feel like DeLay is being singled out by the press. I would say there’s one other factor here, and it’s sort of a traditional issue in Washington is that the backdrop affects the foreground. Uh, once you have, uh, questions being raised about Tom DeLay’s ethics, uh, new issues, new allegations that might not be considered front page and newsworthy for someone else become newsworthy for him. It’s sort of like, uh, Bill Clinton and, you know, personal issues or Dan Quayle and, you know, whether he was, uh, you know, whether we could spell potato. For someone else, uh, it might not have been a problem. But given the history of this individual and especially this powerful position it becomes, uh, an issue in a way that it might not for another politician.
RUSH: Can I translate this for you, folks? “The nature of the evidence is irrelevant. It’s the seriousness of the charge.” We’re back to this, and where this might not be a problem for somebody like Dingy Harry ? we have that coming up ? it is a problem for DeLay because everybody knows he’s a skunk anyway, is what Brownstein is saying. He’s a low brow anyway, and so when these charges come along even if they’re not true we have to take them seriously. That’s basically what Brownstein is saying. DeLay is a questionable character anyway, so these charges, why, they’re serious! It’s sick.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back and set the table. You’ve got to hear this, because I think this answer from Ron Brownstein, which I just played a moment ago but I want to set the table again here and reestablish some continuity in this. I think now that I know what the LA Times published back in June of 2003, I think Brownstein’s answer here is evidence that he is aware his paper has published a pretty hard-hitting piece on Dingy Harry for the same thing, the Washington Post and the New York Times went after Tom DeLay on yesterday. Now, Brownstein is a contributor at CNN. He was on this morning, and the question was, “Doesn’t DeLay have some point here in that there are other politicians certainly whose wives and children work for them. There are certainly other politicians that had that were funded that maybe didn’t dig deep enough to find out who was actually ultimately paying the bill?”


BROWNSTEIN: That’s probably why the — the charges so far are not sufficient to cause Republicans, uh, to break from him, because it’s more a difference of perhaps degree than of kind, uh, with other members. Uh, certainly the conservatives will feel like DeLay is being singled out by the press. I would say there’s one other factor here, and it’s sort of a traditional issue in Washington is that the backdrop affects the foreground. Uh, once you have, uh, questions being raised about Tom DeLay’s ethics, uh, new issues, new allegations that might not be considered front page and newsworthy for someone else become newsworthy for him. It’s sort of like, uh, Bill Clinton and, you know, personal issues or Dan Quayle and, you know, whether he was, uh, you know, whether we could spell potato.
RUSH: Stop the tape! Stop the tape. I’ve got to comment on this. In the first place all of these ethics violations against DeLay have been drummed up by Democrat 527s like MoveOn.org and George Soros-sponsored groups. All these so-called ethics questions have taken place down in front of a political prosecutor down in Texas. I can tell you a little bit about how that works. These things have been drummed up. They didn’t come about as a result of DeLay activity, they have come about because of political activity, and here once again the press seeks to ignore the source of these complaints or charges and simply give them credence. Much as they ignored the Swiftvets, they give credence and credit to their own side and their own special interests and try to pass them off as mainstream. The whole notion here that it was partisan groups that came up and questioned Dan Quayle spelling potato? That was on television; everybody saw it. Clinton’s ethics? Clinton’s ethics, whatever you want to call it, his personal issues. For crying out loud! Monica Lewinsky was not a Republican operative, for crying out loud. She was not somebody working from a special interest group that went in there to sabotage Bill Clinton. To compare those two circumstances with what’s happened to DeLay is to miss the point I think on purpose. Now, here is the rest of Brownstein’s answer because it’s crucial, too.
BROWNSTEIN: For someone else, uh, it might not have been a problem. But given the history of this individual and especially this powerful position it becomes, uh, an issue in a way that it might not for another politician.
RUSH: So the bottom line here is: It’s not the nature of the evidence; it’s the seriousness of the charge, especially when the person that we’re talking about here is a snake anyway, and everybody knows DeLay is a snake. He’s the Hammer! Everybody knows DeLay has got all kinds of problems. Everybody knows DeLay is this and that, and so these baseless, mindless charges that were erroneous in the Washington Post they still matter because they’re being made about Tom DeLay. I mean, this is justice? This is fairness? And the media says, “Well, we may be biased sometimes but we always try to be fair.” All right, is this fairness? There’s no way this is fairness. Nancy Pelosi, Miss America, had to get in on this as well, talking about the Washington Post story yesterday. She’s obviously found out that many of the details in that story were incorrect and so she said…
MISS AMERICA: It’s not about a trip. It’s about a pattern of behavior.
RUSH: Why, that sounds suspiciously right in line with what Brownstein just said! “It’s about a pattern of behavior.” Whose pattern of behavior? A pattern of behavior by who? Set up by who? Described by who? It’s not about DeLay’s pattern of behavior; it’s about what your buds on the left say about his behavior. You’re taking accusations about somebody, accusations that have not been proven, you’re assigning them as true. You’re then assuming that this equals a pattern of behavior on DeLay’s part, and so here come more baseless charges, and it all gets wrapped up in, “Well, he’s a snake anyway, and so we’re going to report it.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: What we have here is the Democrats going bananas over supposed ethics violations of Tom DeLay, ethics violations they’ve ginned up. Many of them root back, trace back to when DeLay was involved in the redistricting of Texas which effectively made Texas a red state in terms of congressional elections, and this is, you know, the winners’ right to draw the lines and this sort of thing. Remember the Democrats in Texas were fleeing and getting in hotels in Oklahoma and other states to avoid voting on this, and DeLay has been hated for doing exactly what Democrats did when they had power all those years. So it’s time to get even with DeLay. So they manufacture these groups, or these groups of theirs, the George Soros 527s and the Move On.org’s manufacture all these so-called ethics charges against delay, and then the Washington Post and the New York Times yesterday with these two hit pieces, hatchet jobs on supposed trip that he took to Russia and how it was supposedly financed illegally which set the record straight on that earlier in the program. New York Times story yesterday talked about all the money that DeLay has made members of his family over the course of like five or six years. It was $500,000, and it turns out it equaled something like 50 or $60,000 a year per employee, and they’re trying to say this is, you know, DeLay — well, people have said, “People do this all the time. This is a common practice.” Well, yeah. But Ron Brownstein said on CNN this morning: It’s different with DeLay because he’s already got this ethics cloud hanging over him. He’s already a dubious guy anyway, and so whatever these charges come along, whether they’re accurate or not it just adds to his woes and we’ve got to take them seriously.
Meaning once again it’s the seriousness of the charge rather than the nature of evidence that matters to these people, because what has happened is a full-fledged hit squad, a political hit squad has been assembled that’s made up of the mainstream press and their willing accomplices in their think tanks and so forth and they’re targeting DeLay for a whole host of reasons. So in researching this last night I found a story from the Los Angeles Times June 23rd, 2003: “It was the kind of legislation that slips under the radar here. The name alone made the eyes glaze over: ‘The Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002.’ In a welter of technical jargon, it dealt with boundary shifts, land trades and other arcane matters ? all in Nevada. As he introduced it, Nevada’s senior U.S. senator, Democrat Harry Reid, assured colleagues that his bill was a bipartisan measure to protect the environment and help the economy in America’s fastest-growing state. What Reid did not explain was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms, federal lobbyist reports show. The Howard Hughes Corp. alone paid $300,000 to the tiny Washington consulting firm of son-in-law Steven Barringer,” this is Hughes Corporation, to allow them “to acquire 998 acres of federal land ripe for development in the exploding Las Vegas…” This is just one instance.


“Barringer is listed in federal lobbyist reports as one of Hughes’ representatives on the measure that his father-in-law introduced. Other provisions were intended to benefit a real estate development headed by a senior partner in the Nevada law firm that employs all four of Reid’s sons ? by moving the right-of-way for a federal power-transmission line off his property and onto what had been protected federal wilderness. The governments of three of Nevada’s biggest cities ? Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson ? also gained from the legislation, which freed up tens of thousands of acres of federal land for development and annexation. All three were represented by Reid’s family members who contacted his staff on their clients’ behalf. The Clark County land bill, which was approved in a late-night session just before Congress recessed in October, reflects a new twist in an old game: These days, when corporations and other interests want to cement a vital relationship with someone in Congress, they’re likely to reach out to hire a member of the family. Reid said he supported the bill because it was good for Nevada ? and not because it helped his family’s clients. And when it comes to lobbying relatives, he said, he has plenty of company. ‘Lots of people have children, wives and stuff that work back here,’ he said. ‘It is not as if a lot of cash is changing hands.'” It isn’t? Three hundred grand from Hughes alone? We don’t know what Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson ended up paying but doesn’t this sort of dwarf whatever charges you’ve heard about Tom DeLay? Doesn’t it make DeLay look like a relative choirboy piker compared to what Dingy Harry did in a piece of legislation?
Here they’re trying to say DeLay took a trip to Russia that was paid for by some scum, and the scum didn’t pay for the trip and he wasn’t on the trip and very little of what the Post reported yesterday was accurate, and here Dingy Harry, to excuse it, says, “Lots of people have children, wives, and stuff that work here.” Well, the New York Times story yesterday was all about how DeLay pays his wife and somebody else and how much they’ve been paid over the years, and Dingy Harry it seems to me has just exonerated DeLay — albeit in a story in 2003. Now, why do I bring this up? I bring this up for the same reason I bring up this stupid Memogate business. Back when the Democrats were discovered to have written secret memos, staffers on the Senate judiciary committee, how to politically defeat Bush judicial nominees, Hispanic nominees, black nominees, female nominees purely for political reasons ? “We can’t let these people ascend to the federal judiciary; they are going to hurt our coalition of Hispanics and blacks. We can’t let the Republicans have this.” — This memo, these series of memos written by Democrat staffers happen to show up on a Republican staffer’s computer and at that time the media went nuts and their question was, “How did that Republican get the memo?” and they fired the guy and they accused him of hacking. It turns out that it wasn’t that, at least according to his testimony. But the fact of the matter is the substance of the memos was of no interest to anybody! Nobody cared a rat’s rear end. All they cared about was, “How did the Republicans get this? How did the Republicans get hold of our trick memo? So now we have this schlub in Martinez’s office who wrote this memo that very few Senators even saw about supposedly politicizing the Schiavo case.
Now my question is, “What in the hell even if this memo had been written by the guy and was circulated and every Senate Republican saw, and said, ‘Yes, this makes sense,’ so what?” What in the world is so politically threatening about trying to save a woman’s life? What in the world is so politically threatening about catering to your constituents that elected you? This is a representative republic. What in the world they try to criminalize policy now. They’re trying to criminalize party politics, is what the left and the media are trying to do with this poor schlub’s memo. But when the Democrats had their own memo, “Oh, the substance didn’t matter, the nature of the evidence was irrelevant, only the seriousness of the charge matters,” and that is how did the Republicans get it? Now we come to DeLay. We have had two hit pieces in the last day, and they were coordinated. It’s very coincidental, the Times and Washington Post run hit pieces on the same day, and so everybody focuses on DeLay, and they’re still talking about DeLay and DeLay’s gotta go and there are stories will the Republican leadership back him up blah, blah, blah. Here we have this story from the LA Times in 2003 and it didn’t cause a ripple anywhere, nowhere. The media didn’t see fit to examine Harry Reid and take a look at maybe what kind of chicanery is going on here. Firms where his son works and all four of his sons-in-law work, or four of his sons and one son-in-law, all benefit financially with the legislation he passes. “Ah, this happens up here all the time.” The next paragraph in this story, by the way: “Seeking favors is as old as the Capitol, but the new tendency to come at it from the side ? through family members ? may be a consequence of campaign-finance reform:
“As restrictions have tightened on traditional political giving, interest groups have cast about for new ways to ingratiate themselves. Nothing strikes quite such a personal note as channeling fees or lucrative jobs to relatives ? whether the relatives lobby Congress or perform other services. There are no restrictions. Neither House nor Senate rules bar the practice.” Really? “Neither House nor Senate rules bar the practice, then what’s the hubbub about Tom DeLay, for crying out loud? “Oh, Rush, it’s ethics! It may not be a violation of the strict letter of the law, but the spirit of the law.” Well, how about ethics and propriety regardless what the law says? Does it make any sense that Harry Reid gets to write legislation that personally benefits his family, and nobody cares about it? I mean the LA Times covered it, don’t misunderstand, but it didn’t reverberate anywhere and it didn’t cause a ripple anywhere else in the press. Now, Reid was not the majority leader at the Senate at the time. We go back to Ron Brownstein, say (paraphrased), “Well, you know, it matters who the person s I mean the person has a pretty clean record and the charge comes up. Well, you sort of give them a little flak here but when it’s somebody sleazy as Tom DeLay, why, pile on and so forth.” That memo from the Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee strategy for exposing Bush administration’s dubious motives? That was leading up to the Iraq war, during an election year, under Jay Rockefeller. They were trying to undermine Bush at every turn.
“You know, Democrats ought to prepare to launch an investigation. They can pull the trigger any time, but they only have one shot at the apple, so the best time would probably be the next year, the election.” That’s from the memo! Democrats ought to prepare to launch an investigation into Bush and into these judicial nominees and so forth, the memo the Democrat staffer wrote says, “We can pull the trigger any time but we only have one shot at the apple so the best time would probably be next year in an election year.” A purely political memo, purely 100% political memo Senate Democrat judiciary committee staffers writing it for the Senate Democrat members on the committee. I’m sorry, this is the intelligence committee. I’m sorry. That’s right, there were two memos! This is the intelligence committee and how they could politicize disrupting the war policy. All these political calculations. There were she that’s right on the intelligence committee and the judiciary committee. Both Senate staffs wrote political memos how to beat Bush how to beat the nominees, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah — and both were discovered, and in both instances, the only thing the media cared about was, “How’d the Republicans get this?” They didn’t care about substance of the memo. Look, I’m not saying anything new here, folks. I’m just trying to get it on the record. The two-way street is still wide open out there. The Democrats go one way and they don’t go the other way. When the same thing happens to them they always manage to turn this around because of their willing accomplices in the media.
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