RUSH: I want to go back to this Obama sound bite at the CIA yesterday afternoon. Listen to just the first part of this.
OBAMA: I understand that it’s hard when you are asked to protect the American people against people who have no scruples —
RUSH: Yeah, you try it.
OBAMA: — and would willingly and gladly kill innocents.
RUSH: Now, listen here.
OBAMA: Al-Qaeda is not constrained by a Constitution —
RUSH: Stop the tape. Al-Qaeda is not constrained by a Constitution. Your president, our president, Barack Obama, looks at the Constitution as a constraint and we know this because President Obama is also the kind of man who has legal people around him who look at the Bill of Rights, who see it as a set of what is called negative rights. I know a lot of people, ‘Negative rights, how can the Bill of Rights be negative rights?’ Because, folks, to liberals, the Bill of Rights is horrible, the Bill of Rights grants citizens freedom. It tells the citizens what the government cannot do to them. The Bill of Rights limits the federal government, and that’s negative to a socialist like Obama; that’s negative to an elitist like Obama. The Constitution is negative. So he’s got constraints. The Constitution tells him he’s got things he can’t do that he wants to do. That’s not his job. He is there to defend and protect it, not unilaterally change it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to belabor a point because this is fundamental and it’s crucial to understanding Barack Obama. He’s over at the CIA yesterday, he’s got this pep rally of secretaries and custodial staff assembled, and they’re cheering him on like he’s a rock star. And he tells them, (paraphrasing) ‘Yeah, I know your job’s going to be a lot harder now because of me, but, but, but, and I know Al-Qaeda is not constrained by a Constitution.’ Folks, that is so important to understand how he looks at the Constitution. He’s not alone. This is how liberals look at the Constitution in general. They look at it as a constraint on them. There’s a new, I don’t know if you want to call it legal theory, but liberal judicial activists harp on this and write about it all the time: the theory of negative rights in the Constitution. Now, all of us who understand the Constitution and were taught the Constitution, who read it, would never imagine anything negative about it, as it relates to ourselves.
The Constitution protects the average citizen. The Constitution basically lays out our freedom and it limits what the government can do to impinge and infringe on our freedom. And people like President Obama see that as a constraint. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, specifically spell out what the government cannot do to intrude on our freedom. That’s called negative rights by people like Obama because it limits government. And that’s just not fair. They believe in government, not you. They believe in government, not the individual. So the Constitution’s a problem for them. They look at the Constitution as having them in shackles. The Constitution is sort of like a miniature prison for them. They’re constrained by it. So what’s the easiest thing to do? Change it. Or just ignore it. Or get your liberal buddies in the judicial system and rewrite it, the Constitution, from the bench. And this they have done.
I just think it’s crucial, hugely important to understand from where President Obama comes on a daily basis. He loved making the CIA’s job harder. He loved it by imposing some mythical version of US values — which are not US values; they are Obama values — on the counterterrorism people at the CIA. It was just a couple of weeks ago that President Obama said we’re not going to live in the past, we’re not going to look at the past, we’re not going to prosecute the Bush administration, that wouldn’t make any sense. Apparently President Obama has caved to pressure from the left and now says he is open to prosecutions for torture. This afternoon at the White House, in the Oval Office, he was meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan, took some questions from a giddy Drive-By Media corps. A reporter said, ‘I want to ask you about the interrogation. You were clear about not wanting to prosecute those who carried out the instructions. Can you be that clear about those who devised the policy? Quickly, on the second matter, how do you feel about investigations into the special commission, or something of that nature to go back and really look at the issue?’
OBAMA: The OLC memos that were released reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings. That’s why I’ve discontinued those enhanced interrogation programs. For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do think it’s appropriate for them to be prosecuted. With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that this is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that.
RUSH: I tell you, it’s hard to go through a day of this program without getting boiling blood mad, without just getting livid. This doesn’t happen in the United States. This happens in Third World nations where you imprison your predecessors. This just doesn’t happen here. Besides, this is all bogus. Nothing was done that was illegal! And yet the whole country thinks that it was. Extreme measures, torture, we let down our moral guide, and we behaved immorally. It’s mind-boggling to have to sit here and listen to this and see that there is a stupid, ignorant press corps lapping all this stuff up, in fact advocating for this, advocating for the prosecution of the Bush administration that came up with these ‘immoral’ procedures. Obama then continued with this.
OBAMA: I think for Congress to examine ways that it can be done in a bipartisan fashion, outside of the typical, uh, uh, hearing process that can sometimes break down and break entirely along party lines, to the extent that there are independent, uh, uh, participants who are above reproach and have credibility, that would probably be a more sensible approach to take.
RUSH: Independent participants who are above reproach and have credibility, we need to do this outside the typical hearing process? We still need to go after them, we just have to do it in a different way. Even if they have great credibility and they’re above reproach, we’re still going to go after them, we just have to do it in a way that’s not public so that you don’t see it happening, so that we don’t besmirch their reputations in the process. This business, folks, of the Constitution being looked at as a shackle, the brilliance of the Founding Fathers was separation of powers, everything in the Constitution was designed to protect against a president like Obama. The express purpose of the Constitution is to stop somebody like Obama who wants to have the federal government now have equity stakes in the automobile companies and in the banks and control the credit markets, the financial systems, and anything else he can get his hands on. It’s to stop the president of the United States from handcuffing US security, in limiting freedom of the American people. The Constitution was written with people like Obama in mind to stop them. It’s been turned upside down and on its head, the Constitution has, because now the Constitution’s looked at to some as limiting the great Messiah. Why, the Constitution limits the greatness of The One who has finally restored mortality and justice to the American nation.
Everything is ass backwards and we have a sycophantic press corps engaging in journalistic malpractice. We have a legal profession which has sidled up with this administration, a legal profession supposedly defending and devoted to the Constitution as well. There’s nobody standing up for the Constitution, nobody. ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, Obama says –‘ yeah, he wants you to think he’s defending the Constitution by telling you it’s imperfect and it needs to be changed to allow him more latitude to save you from the economic crisis or whatever crisis he creates down the road.
A quick phone call from Kim in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Rush, it’s a privilege and an honor. Thank you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: And I appreciate the fact that you’re a voice for so many of us who don’t have a voice.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’m calling to voice my concern about the fact of Obama releasing recklessly the interrogation secrets that we have, because I believe it really puts every sailor, soldier, Marine in imminent danger should they be ever taken captive. Obviously Al-Qaeda and those types of regimes have no respect for human life whatsoever, so I think we ought to remember what happened to those two soldiers who disappeared in Iraq and whose mutilated bodies were found later as a source of retaliation and I believe because of the reckless release of this information, that really does put every single soldier, sailor, Marine deployed or currently looking to deploy —
RUSH: You know what? I want to respectfully disagree with you on one small thing here. I don’t think the release of the memos puts our uniformed personnel in greater harm, or puts them in greater harm’s way. They always have been, from the moment they put the uniform on, I don’t care what year, I don’t care what war, I don’t care where they’re deployed, they are always in harm’s way. Now, it may well be that we have run up against a bunch of terrorists who commit atrocities unlike previous regimes, although I don’t think anybody can outdo the Nazis, and I don’t think anybody can outdo the Japanese in World War II. The point is, evil is always there and it’s always gonna focus on the men and women who wear our uniform. What has changed with the release of the memos is that the enemy will be less intimidated by our men and women in uniform. Our men and women in uniform are going to be constrained and shackled and worried that any action they take could later come back and land them before a congressional hearing and maybe in jail, for just defending and protecting the Constitution and the country.
After seeing this, the people you’re talking about who have beheaded and have created all these atrocities and committed them, they’re going to be emboldened to do even more because they’re going to get away with it! We’re not going to be able to retaliate. Our hands have just been tied, or the men and women in the uniform’s hands have just been tied. And, by the way, this isn’t new. Look at the Marines at Haditha that John Murtha wanted to convict solely on media reports. We’ve got the men and women of the armed forces under assault in this country by a political party and an ideology in this country, and they have been for quite a while. What’s changed is, not the release of memos, what’s changed is we have a president of the United States who has just as much disregard for the men and women of the United States military as every other liberal who’s come along but has never been president before.