RUSH: We now go to the last page of the Scalia opinion, which we have posted at RushLimbaugh.com — and I’m serious. When you have the time, it’s about 63 pages, 60 pages, the actual opinion itself. But the first part of it is the breakdown of the original intent of the Second Amendment and the attempt to make it unambiguous. Scalia does this brilliantly, making sure that people understand. It’s not ambiguous at all, when you know how they spoke back in those times. So here’s the summation. ‘We hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self defense.’ That’s the trigger lock. They even required you to have a trigger lock the whole time the gun was in the home. You were a sitting duck in DC!
Somebody breaks into your home under cover of darkness, you gotta wait for them to take action — whatever they want, whether they got a gun or not — and then you gotta call the cops and let the government protect you, and that’s what this case was all about. ‘Assuming that Heller,’ Heller is a cop, ‘is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights,’ meaning he’s not a felon, meaning he doesn’t get into other kind of problems with the law, ‘the District of Columbia must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.’ Then Scalia says, ‘We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country…’ I want you to listen to this very carefully. ‘We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in the country and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many friends of the court brief who believe the prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution.
‘The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns,’ and then he cites some places where that’s allowed, ‘but the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.’ No government has the right to mandate that. ‘Undoubtedly, some think the Second Amendment is outmoded in our society, where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well trained police forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable. But what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered.’
When I read this… See, it’s so simple, so strong, so powerful in its simplicity, the role of the court. And then it got me to thinking. This case, as far as the liberals were concerned on the court, the four liberal justices — Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, Stevens — wasn’t about the DC ban. This case wasn’t about Mr. Heller. When you look at some of Breyer’s dissent and when you read some of what John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, what you learn is that the liberals on this court sought to amend the Constitution. They weren’t pronouncing the constitutionality of a law. They looked at this as an opportunity to literally amend the Constitution from the bench, which is not permitted by the US Constitution. The Supreme Court has taken on the role, Marbury vs. Madison, of determining whether or not laws passed by Congress are constitutional. But to sit there and to take the occasion of this case — DC vs. Heller, Heller vs. DC — and use it as an opportunity to declare the Second Amendment, i.e., part of the Constitution as unconstitutional! Folks, if that doesn’t tell you what their intentions are down the road, I can’t think of anything else that I could use as an illustration to do it better.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: John Paul Stevens in his dissent on the DC gun ban bill today wrote that the majority, meaning Scalia and the gang, ‘would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.’ Folks, that is scary. I know Justice Stevens has been around for a long time, but that kind of interpretation — there is no way, I don’t care how convoluted a way that you read the Second Amendment, there is nothing in it to indicate that the Framers intended to grant the federal government, elected officials, the right to police people. The Bill of Rights limited government, for crying out loud. The Bill of Rights told us what our freedoms and rights were, and where they came from, and they came from God, baby. They were not enumerated by man. They were not enumerated by government.
The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights sought to limit government, and yet here is a justice of the Supreme Court suggesting that Scalia and the majority would have us believe that over 200 years ago the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses. I’m telling you, this is too close, this 5-4 stuff. Four justices of the US Supreme Court came damn close to just obviating the Second Amendment from the bench, under guise of deciding some case from the District of Columbia? Let’s go to the audio sound bites just to show you how much ignorance there is in the Drive-By Media. This is this morning on CNN. Tony Harris is talking to Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com, a well-known Second Amendment expert, Dahlia Lithwick. Tony Harris said, ‘My thought was that it would be closer to a unanimous decision, but this 5-4 thing surprised me a bit, Dahlia.’
LITHWICK: The really big, big metaquestion here, this question of, is there a personal individual right to bear arms really is fundamentally a very ideological one, it’s a very political one, it has a lot to do with your Libertarian notions about the constitutional protections that you’re afforded, and so I think at the end of the day what we’re seeing here with this very, very typical 5-4 split —
RUSH: Dahlia Lithwick. Remember that name. A Supreme Court decision dealing with an amendment to the US Constitution, in her view, is ideological and political. I’m sure she believes this, I’m sure she looks at the court as a political arbiter. I’m sure she thinks the court’s made a political decision here. I’m sure, because she probably went to journalism school somewhere — hell, you don’t even have to go to journalism school, just go to school anywhere in America and they will tell you that the Supreme Court decides political issues, the Supreme Court will tell us what we can and can’t do. This is frightening, the level of ignorance. I’m not talking about intelligence. She may have a high IQ. Doubt it, but she might. But the level of ignorance, the inability to learn things and apply them to something as fundamental as the United States Constitution, see how it gets bastardized? Do you see how it gets torn apart in the hands of the opinion makers in this country? Scalia said it’s an individual right, made it clear. The majority said the right to bear arms is an individual right. There’s nothing ideological about it. There’s nothing political about it. It’s constitutional, Dahlia.
So you could take this decision to mean that there is a presumption that the Second Amendment actually means what it says. Can you believe we’ve gotten to this point where we have to have the court tell us, ‘Yep, says what it says.’ And that’s why there is wording about the right to bear arms, otherwise that language has no meaning at all. You gotta read this Scalia opinion. The right to bear arms. There’s nothing ambiguous about it. Zilch. It’s a right. It is also saying that the court will not go through all these state laws to determine what is or is not constitutional. However, laws that bar the right to bear arms need to be very specific and aimed narrowly if they’re to be constitutional, and that means aimed at felons, aimed at the mentally challenged, the mentally ill, certain places and so forth. This is crystal clear. Here Jeffrey Toobin, legal expert, CNN, talking to Heidi Collins at CNN. Listen to this question. Memo to Jonathan Klein running CNN: Do you understand how incompetent some of the people you have on your network are? Listen to this question. Heidi Collins to Jeffrey Toobin: ‘Specifically, Jeffrey, that’s really what it’s about, isn’t it, the Constitution trumping policy?’ The Constitution trumping policy? The Constitution trumping policy? (interruption) Yes, of course it is, but for this to be a question to a legal scholar? Here’s the answer.
TOOBIN: This is just a big, big event in American constitutional history because the Second Amendment has been a true mystery.
RUSH: No.
TOOBIN: No one really knew for decades what it meant —
RUSH: Yes, they did.
TOOBIN: — in practical terms.
RUSH: Yes, they did.
TOOBIN: Now the Supreme Court, by and large just 5-4, has said that there is a constitutional right to own a handgun inside the home.
RUSH: Stop the tape here a second. The only reason, Mr. Toobin, anybody ever debated this is because people like you, liberals years and years ago tried to tell us it didn’t mean that, and you’ve been passing laws throughout these local municipalities and states chipping away at the Second Amendment because you don’t like it. Nobody had any question about this ’til you liberals got involved, tried to obfuscate it and confuse everybody about it. And now we have to get to the point where the Constitution, which is plainly clear in this case, has to be affirmed by the US Supreme Court? Here’s the rest of the answer.
TOOBIN: It raises a lot of questions about the limits of this decision. I mean, how much gun control will be allowed. Certainly there is some. There was some discussion of military weapons. The court clearly is very concerned that there not be a constitutional right to own a surface-to-air missile. But how this gets translated into the real world is going to take many, many years.
RUSH: That’s right, and you know why? Because the liberals are going to go out there and try to muddy this up like they have all along. They’re going to start talking about the majority of the justices in this decision being extremists and nutcases. I have no doubt how they are going to react to this. Isn’t this a case of the Constitution trumping policy? Geez. (laughing) I don’t know. That just boggles my mind. ‘Isn’t this a case of the Constitution trumping policy?’ As though the policy has been screwed by the Constitution. Damn that Constitution, damn it, we had a great policy of protecting people, and now it’s been trumped by the Constitution. I know that’s how they think. The thing is, the DC gun ban, there was more crime in DC after they got this ban done and in place than anywhere in the country, and New York, too. Number two. New York, hell, the mayor up there is trying to tax you just for moving around. You know, wait ’til they find a way to put guns on top of the cranes before they fall and as a means of getting rid of them. Here’s Obama, February 12th, 2008, during a forum sponsored by ABC TV and ThePolitico.com, the moderator is Leon Harris: ‘One other issue that’s of great importance here in the District as well as gun control. You said in Idaho recently, quoting here, ‘I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.’ But you do support the DC handgun ban, and you’ve said that it’s constitutional. How can you reconcile those two different positions?’
OBAMA: Well, because I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it is important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership genuinely. And a lot of people, law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is a result of illegal handgun use. And so there’s nothing wrong I think with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets —
RUSH: Another idiot! That’s not what the DC gun ban did. It left guns in the hands of the illegals, it always does. I’m not talking about immigration here. The only people who had guns were the criminals, by definition! And the problem is the criminals could climb into your house anywhere in the district any time of night and you were stuck if they had a gun, even a knife. If you pulled a gun out you were liable, you were breaking the law before they were, unless you’re Carl Rowan, that’s right, Carl Rowan, late columnist, Washington Post, he got caught violating the ban, he said, screw the ban, I’m going to protect my family, big liberal columnist for the Washington Post. So here’s the messiah, along with all the other leftists, openly, blatantly, apparently proudly exhibiting a total ignorance of the DC gun ban, thinking it’s constitutional. Now, here’s Obama yesterday on the gun case. This was in Chicago. An unidentified reporter said, ‘The Supreme Court’s expected to rule tomorrow on the DC gun ban. Can you review for us where you stand on that?’
OBAMA: Why don’t I wait until the decision comes out and then I will comment on it, as opposed to trying to prognosticate what the Supreme Court is going to decide tomorrow.
REPORTER: You commented on it before you — you support the DC gun ban.
OBAMA: What I’ve said is that I do not — what I’ve said is that I’m a strong supporter of the Second Amendment —
RUSH: BS.
OBAMA: — but I do not think that that precludes local governments being able to provide some commonsense gun laws that keep guns out of the hands of gangbangers or children, that local jurisdictions are going to have different sets of problems, and that this is a very fact-intensive decision that has to be made.
RUSH: Okay, some more gibberish, absolute, total gibberish. Local governments gotta be able to keep guns out of the hands of gangbangers and children. Gun laws already do that, unless they’re going to go violate the law in the first place or in the second place and get a gun. In fact, his comment here pretty much parallels some of the things that Breyer said in his dissent. ‘I’m a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but I don’t think that precludes local government from being able to provide some commonsense gun laws that keep guns out of the hands of gangbangers–‘ those laws already exist. It’s when those laws are broken and people aren’t armed that they have problems. Anyway, so there’s a micromanagement here. The Second Amendment is to be molded and flaked as these liberals want it to be. The Supreme Court struck it down for now.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the problems that we’re having here in our culture with all of this is the bastardization of the meaning of the word ‘right,’ as in, to have a right. For example, look what the left is saying today. We don’t have a right to own guns. I mean, that would be their preference, that there be no Second Amendment. Just get four or five justices to wipe it out. We have no right, even though the Constitution specifically says we do. Yet, they further the notion that we all have a ‘right’ to health care. We do not have a right to health care! That we all have a ‘right’ to a home. We do not have a right to a home! That we all have a ‘right’ to go to college. We do not have a right to go to college, because those are not rights! That we have a ‘right’ to be free of the pollution of oil. That is not a right. I don’t even want to talk about Reverend Wright, ’cause there we’re talking wrongs. If we don’t have a ‘right’ to health care, what is it, then?
Would you call it opportunity? An option? A chance? Who says? Where is it written anywhere, where is it stated? And don’t tell me that it just makes common sense. Where is it stated that we have a right to health care, or that we have a right to own a home, or a right to go to college? Where is it stated? Where is it? It’s nowhere. It has been manufactured. The left has convinced everybody that they have these rights, and that if they are denied these rights that somebody must pay for it. Now, Obama. Obama says there’s nothing wrong with taking illegal handguns off the street because of a violent society, the handguns being ‘illegal’ begs the question since it’s the issue that’s in dispute here, whether owning handguns can be legal per se. But here’s the question when it comes to Obama’s comment and thinking. Obama wants to write the Second Amendment out of the Constitution along with all the other liberals. They want to write the Second Amendment out of the Constitution.
Why? Because our society is too violent. Our society is too violent because everybody can get guns. So write the Second Amendment out, and nobody will have a gun. That’s what they believe. Then, at the same time, Obama and his gang who want to get rid of the Second Amendment because our society is too violent turn around and applaud the same court for rewriting the Constitution to give rights to terrorists! Who are violent and seek to destroy the nation. So somebody please explain to me how it is that Obama and his group can celebrate a previous decision that says to terrorists, ‘Come on in! You’ve got full citizenship rights, you can come in and have access to our US court system and we know that you are violent and that you are murderers and you intend to wipe us out, but come on in,’ meanwhile, we gotta write the Second Amendment out of the Constitution because, tsk-tsk, our society is too violent — meaning Americans are too violent. And, by the way, whoever said, as Toobin referred to, that the Second Amendment permitted surface-to-air missiles?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We got Obama’s reaction to the Supreme Court decision on the gun ban, the Second Amendment. He was in Pittsburgh today at the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University. Bloomberg TV, Peter Cook was interviewing the messiah and Cook said, ‘The court today, a very important ruling in regard to the handgun law in DC, 5-4 ruling, what’s your reaction?’ Now, keep in mind there’s no prompter here.
OBAMA: I believe that the Second Amendment means something, that it is an individual right, and that’s what the Supreme Court held, so I agree with that aspect of the opinion. What I’ve also said is that every individual right can be bound by the interests of the community at large. And the Supreme Court agreed with that as well. It looks to me that the DC handgun ban overshot the runway; that it went beyond constitutional limits.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Remember, we’ve got the sound bite, just played it last hour. Last year, maybe not even a year ago, he thought it was 100 percent constitutional. This is John Kerryitis. Every sentence has a ‘but.’ Well, I think the sun’s going to come up tomorrow, but if it doesn’t, John McCain will have the answer. Here’s the rest of the bite.
OBAMA: Doesn’t mean the local communities can’t, you know, pass background checks, that they can’t, you know, make sure that they’re tracing guns that have been used in crimes to find out where they got them from. So there’s still room for us to I think have some commonsense gun laws that are also compatible with the Second Amendment and, you know, the key is to try to stop using this as a wedge issue and let’s figure out an intelligent way where we can stop having kids being murdered on the streets while making sure that law-abiding gun owners are protected in their rights.
RUSH: Wow! My friends, the radiance of this brilliance, even though he’s in Pittsburgh and these words were digitally recorded, I am being overwhelmed by the unique unspoken brilliance emanating from the messiah. I have never heard this kind of clarity before, I have never heard somebody cut to the quick and take away the muck and make what’s important visible as much as the messiah has done here. I am rendered almost speechless. (interruption) What brilliance? Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re right. Just a bunch of gobbledygook. Here’s the next question. A lot of Democrats will say the court got it wrong. You’re not in that camp?
OBAMA: I am not in the camp of their overall reasoning. Now, you know, how they applied it and how they will apply it in the future I think is — is the key question.
RUSH: What?
OBAMA: I think it’s very important for everybody to understand that the Supreme Court ruling did not say that you can’t have commonsense gun laws. It just said that this particular case violated the basic principle that people do have a right to bear arms.
RUSH: I was going to say this is dangerous, but it’s actually eye-opening. This is a typical liberal. When he says he’s not in the camp of their overall reasoning, how they applied it, and how it will — Lord. He just said he approved it, he just said he liked the decision, he just said the decision was good, he said it was common sense. Now he doesn’t agree with the reasoning and how they came to this decision. Look, like I said, I don’t want to establish a habit here of breaking down and analyzing this guy or parsing his words. This is worth derision, this is worth being laughed at, to try to take this guy seriously is to fall into a trap.
Let’s go to the phones. Bud in Austin. You’re first today up on the phones, and I’m glad you held on. Thank you.
CALLER: Rush, what an honor and pleasure, sir.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’m a law student here in Texas, and one of the privileges we’ve had — because Justice Scalia is a very private person — he will occasionally speak at different law schools, and we had that opportunity earlier this year. And of course someone asked about the Heller case, and like most justices or any good justice would say, he said that he couldn’t comment on it because it was a pending case. But what his follow-up comment was — and I know we’ve been speaking to original intent earlier in the show — is that I don’t care what the original intent of the Founders was. What I care about is the original meaning of the Constitution, what did it mean when it was first formed. And of course that right that was given to the people through the Second Amendment is the right to individually keep and bear arms.
RUSH: Which was affirmed today.
CALLER: Yes, and then we get into this point today talking about these rights. Another beautiful point that he made was, what right — because this is just a group of people that don’t like a right that America has and the way it’s used. And so they hire an attorney — well, this is the opposite point.
RUSH: I’ve lost you. Wait, hold on a minute. I’m losing you. This is just a group of people that don’t have —
CALLER: The city, DC, does not like this right. They don’t like it. And so they’re allowed to pass this law. And they’re allowed to say, we’re going to take this away. And one of Scalia’s great points is, what gives you the right to argue in front of nine judges in black robes to take away the constitutional right that’s been given, just like that? So it speaks to the heart of the greatness of the man.
RUSH: Well, okay, there’s another way of putting this, and to me, this case, you wonder why did the Supreme Court take it, why do they reject certain cases, why do they take some. I don’t know what the majority vote on taking this case was but I’ll betcha it’s pretty high because I think the liberals wanted to use this case to get rid of the Second Amendment. We’re buying into the notion that this case was about Heller versus DC. Heller-DC was the vehicle. You read the dissents. I agree with you totally about Scalia, as everybody knows. You read the dissents, read Breyer and read John Paul Stevens and read some of the comments from the idiots in the media, and you will clearly understand that what they sought to do was make the Second Amendment unconstitutional on the basis it has no application to today because when it was first written, America was an entirely different country, which puts into great focus your comment on Scalia. He doesn’t care about the intent of the Founders. He cares about the original meaning of the Constitution. Some might say, ‘Well, what’s the difference?’ It’s a fine distinction. There’s a fine line there. But this is scary. Four justices of the US Supreme Court voted to just get rid of the Second Amendment. That’s too damn close. Once again, Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote. I don’t know about you, but it kind of bothers me that our Constitution and the rights enumerated therein, at least as the court is currently constituted, hinge on how Justice Kennedy feels every day when he gets out of bed and goes to work. Four justices voted to get rid of the Second Amendment, four liberal justices. This is too close.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To Kalamazoo, Michigan, this is Frank. You’re up, sir. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Rush, what an honor. Mega dittos.
RUSH: Thanks much.
CALLER: You were commenting on Dahlia Lithwick earlier, Slate magazine.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: As luck would have it, I just got my new issue of Newsweek, and she’s also got a column in there.
RUSH: That doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek’s got a bunch of morons that write in there.
CALLER: All right, here’s the title of her article: ‘The High Court: A User’s Guide.’ I want to read you two sentences.
RUSH: Before you do this, let me give people one more bit of information about Dahlia Lithwick. She’s a lawyer, she clerked for somebody on the US Ninth Circus, clerked for one of the judges on the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals. Now go ahead and read the two sentences.
CALLER: ‘Anybody who believes the current Supreme Court looks like America needs to take a few more trips on a Greyhound Bus.’ Here’s the good part. ‘All the judges are white and/or old.’ Rush, I know you’re tight with the brilliant conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Could you please give him a call and let him know he’s changed color?
RUSH: Well, maybe Dahlia Lithwick knows something we don’t know. Maybe he puts on black face before he goes out in public.
CALLER: How can this article get in Newsweek? Don’t they have proofreaders? This is a national magazine. It’s embarrassing.
RUSH: That’s not what she means.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Frank, what she means is there’s not one black attitude on that court. There’s not one authentic slave blood black who is a liberal.
CALLER: Oh, okay.
RUSH: There’s no Thurgood Marshall. Clarence Thomas may as well be white is what she means. She’s a liberal. The object of the court is not to look like America anyway. The court is not to decide cases based on the makeup of America, based on the demographics or any other categorization of the people who live here. She’s a great object lesson because she has a total misunderstanding of what the court’s about, she’s trying to make that misunderstanding reality. She wants the court to sit there and push her left-wing liberal agenda, which is based, of course, on there’s not fair distribution of results, of outcomes, goods, services and income; it’s a very unfair society, we need to equalize people, grant them new rights and so forth. She looks at the court as a purely activist liberal machine, and it’s pretty close. They got four solid liberals and Justice Kennedy decides how he wants to go case by case.
CALLER: It’s so depressing.
RUSH: Welcome to liberalism.
CALLER: I know. Anyway, I thought I heard that name. I never heard of the woman before, and I thought you might be interested.
RUSH: Read that last sentence again. It’s in Newsweek, folks, in Newsweek, who, by the way, latest poll shows that Obama is up by how many over McCain, 15?
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Read the last sentence again out there, Frank.
CALLER: ‘All the judges are white and/or old.’ All the judges are white. That’s the first part of it.
RUSH: Yeah, and I know what she means. As I say, she’s accusing Clarence Thomas of being a fake.
CALLER: It’s an insult to the man.
RUSH: Of course it’s an insult. What do you think liberals do?
CALLER: Newsweek should know better. Don’t they have proofreaders?
RUSH: Newsweek, if it’s in there, they wanted it to say what it says, Frank. It’s like if you watch a taped television program and there are obscenities or offensive things in it, they wanted them in there because of if it’s taped they had a chance to redo it or take out the offensive things. Same thing. This thing that she wrote was submitted days before it goes to press, they proofread it, they proofread it again, they fact check it. If they didn’t want it in there, it wouldn’t be in there.
CALLER: Take your word for it.
RUSH: That piece is designed to get you bent out of shape.
CALLER: Oh, it did. Then I heard you mention her name this afternoon and it rang a bell ’cause I was beside myself from reading it last night. Just no truth in this country anymore.
RUSH: No. No. There’s no truth or very little truth in the Drive-By Media. There’s plenty of truth in the country. For example, story out there today, OPEC predicting $175-a-barrel of oil by the end of the year. So? Hasn’t happened. Media can’t wait to run with that. All media, most media today, speculation on doom and gloom, the worst, rotten things that could happen. Experts say global warming could lead to more terrorism. I got the story, just saw it. Experts say global warming could lead to more terrorism. That’s not news. It’s not even fact. It’s in the future, and nobody knows. You take a look, folks, I want you to make a study of this. It isn’t hard. Go to any web page you like, look at the vast majority of the stories outside of sports and you will see that they largely deal with experts predicting doom and gloom down the road in the future, or governments doing it or whoever.