RUSH: I don’t know how many of you are following the bounty situation, the New Orleans Saints and the National Football League, but it is really getting…what’s the word? It’s not “complicated,” but… It’s “convoluted,” I guess, is the word. The league has released what they say is evidence. Media people looking at it don’t think it’s that slam dunk proving that there was a bounty program offering payment for serious injury being inflicted. The league, however, is insistent. And they’re not backing down from any of the penalties or player suspensions.

And then there’s this.

Now, there are fundamental changes happening in the National Football League, and I’ve told you this before. I’ve been very open about the fact that I think it’s not gonna be long before… Well, in fact, it’s already happening. There are now people proposing bans on high school football and college football. Now, they’re not big, and they’re not from mainstream types yet. But it’s gaining steam at a much faster clip than I thought. And you’ve got ex-players — Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a Hall of Fame, four-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback and others — coming out saying they’d never let their kids play the game now.

Folks, if you love football, you better enjoy it while you can, because there are fundamental changes coming to this game. They’re gonna forever alter it. If they get half of what they’re trying to get here, it’s not gonna be the game that people have known. It’s the most profitable sports league in the history of the country. People are just sitting around watching this happen in a purely defensive way that has me really surprised. And I saw this story early today.

Now, keep in mind we’re talking about the National Football League. We are talking about a sport that is regimented in ways that are similar to the military in terms of lifestyle, coaching technique, practice, execution, and mental preparedness. It’s not a lackadaisical sport like baseball or soccer. It is very regimented for the players. And it’s being… I don’t know. “Chickified” is not quite accurate as to what’s happening, but it’s close. “In order to prevent the imposition of bounties on players who complain about bounties, the NFL” is creating an “anonymous bounty tip line.”

They are looking for whistleblowers among the players who want to let the league know that their team is engaging in the practice of bounties. They’re setting up an anonymous bounty tip line. This is the National Football League! This is not some government agency. This is not some… Well, it is a private sector corporate entity, but they’re football players, the essence of alpha males. You’ve going to turn ’em into snitches now? Whistleblowers, anonymous snitches? “In order to prevent the imposition of bounties on players who complain about bounties, the NFL will create a vehicle for the anonymous reporting of the existence of bounties.

“After WednesdayÂ’s meeting between Commissioner Roger Goodell and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)…” You know nothing good can come of this now, when Democrat members of the senate are getting involved here. “After Wednesday’s meeting between Commissioner Roger Goodell and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), [the commissioner] announced that a tip line will be created for anyone who wishes to let the league know about the existence of bounties…

“‘We’ve taken very strong action to make sure they’re not part of sports going forward,’ Goodell said. ‘And that the integrity of our game and the safety of our players is paramount. And that we’re going to take very aggressive steps to protect that.'” Meanwhile, the players, the Saints, they’re still not satisfied with the evidence that’s been presented by the league that concludes that there was a bounty program. Now, there was, but the evidence that’s being used to suspend these guys, players suspect it’s not all that slam dunk.

And then the second story is, “Given the confusion regarding the NFLÂ’s evidence in the Saints bounty case, itÂ’s fitting that thereÂ’s now confusion regarding the intentions of Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to investigate and combat bounties in pro sports.” Now, you know that’s gonna fix it. You’ve got Senator Durbin and the Democrats being involved to solve the bounty program. You know what happens when the government gets involved in anything: It changes forever. It becomes regulated for the personal aggrandizement of the politicians.

“After a short Wednesday meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Durbin declared that the league has done enough to clean up its mess regarding bounties, prompting Durbin to abandon his plan to fire a shot across the NFLÂ’s bow via a full-blown hearing on bounties.” So Goodell shut that down, but Durbin was gonna have a hearing on this stuff. Now, you see? How many years have they been pursuing Roger Clemens? Roger Clemens can’t lie to Congress.

If you lie to Congress about taking human growth hormone or whatever, we’re gonna come after you for four years on a process crime, perjury. You can’t lie to Congress! Eric Holder has admitted lying to Congress twice but he doesn’t call it lying. One of the big lies was that Mukasey, the attorney general for George W. Bush, essentially put in play Fast and Furious. The predecessor of that program is called Wide Receiver. Wide Receiver did not have much in common with Fast and Furious at all.

So Holder, in a moment of testimony some months ago, said, “I — I — I didn’t even know about Fast and Furious. The Bush administration did that! Mukasey did that. I didn’t learn about it for months after I was sworn in as attorney general.” So Darrell Issa and the committee say, “Could you show us some proof?” And there was no proof. And there was no proof. And finally we heard yesterday that Holder “recanted” and “changed his testimony.” He lied!

And there are two instances of this. Eric Holder lied to this committee. There was a blatant lie in their February 4th, 2011, letter to Congress that there was no Fast and Furious program. The lies that the Department of Justice has told to this congressional committee… And, by the way, my buddy Andy McCarthy made a great point. He had a post on this yesterday. I was flying out of town and I was reading it on the airplane. It was National Review Online, I think, where he posted it.

It might have been at PJ Media. He posts both places. It was about the whole executive privilege thing. And a lot of people are saying that the administration invoking executive privilege to protect Holder, that’s fine. It’s executive branch. But McCarthy’s point was: Look, did you know there was not a Department of Justice when this nation was founded? There was an attorney general when the nation was founded. Do you know how many years it was…? Snerdley, let me ask you.

How many years was it after the nation was founded, after the Constitution was ratified before we had a Department of Justice? (interruption) One hundred years. One hundred years until we had a Department of Justice. We had an attorney general before that, but he was an adviser. He was simply a legal adviser to the president. Now, McCarthy’s point is that the Congress created the Department of Justice. And the Congress, if they wanted to tomorrow, could eliminate it.

It’s not part of the Constitution. The Founders did not create it. Congress did. Congress has total purview of the courts. They determine the circuits and how many courts. They do this. They are the elected representatives of the people. So Andy’s point among many others was that it’s perfectly within Darrell Issa’s purview. Since Congress funds the Department of Justice. Since Congress created it. Now, they put it in the executive branch, but they created it. There is oversight there.

You’ve gotta be very careful on all of this, though, because executive privilege is oftentimes invoked for perfectly good reasons. Congress, by the same token, does not have the right to ride roughshod over the administration. There are many times that presidents have invoked executive privilege for entirely qualified reasons. So it’s not something to be universally attacked, universally assaulted. You have to examine it case by case each time it’s asserted. In this case, it’s so suspicious and it’s so obvious.

There’s no national security here. It’s clear that there are basically two things that are happening. Either Holder’s gotta be protected or Obama does. And if it’s Obama he’s in trouble, because he has said he never heard about it; he didn’t know anything about it. Yet he’s trying to protect his involvement in it by invoking of the executive privilege. Now, Congress doesn’t have the right to run roughshod over the executive branch, but they did create the Department of Justice. So there is some latitude here.

But I just… I find this… Whistleblowers in the NFL now are gonna have a tip line to report if there are bounties. We have Senator Durbin who wanted to have hearings on bounties ’til he was talked out of it by the commissioner. We’re gonna do everything we can to get to the bottom of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds and all these other guys supposedly lying to Congress. But here’s the attorney general blatantly lying to Congress twice, and he’s allowed to recant and retract his testimony.

Have you ever heard of anybody being able to allowed to retract testimony in court, for example? Does it ever happen? When it’s discovered to be perjury, is somebody ever allowed to say, “Well, okay, I lied; I’ll retract that; I will withdraw that” or “I will recant that testimony”? So priorities are a little out of whack here. We don’t need Dick Durbin messing around in the NFL; we don’t need tip lines this kind of thing. We donÂ’t need tattletales, snitches and this kind of stuff.