Media Matters reports that Rush Limbaugh recently said in his radio show that American soldiers who call on the US government to withdraw all troops from Iraq are “phony soldiers.” The statement itself is outrageous enough, what’s perhaps even more troubling is that some seem to be all too happy to defend Limbaugh without hesitation.
When the NYT published an ad from MoveOn attacking General David Petreaus, conservative bloggers were - rightfully - outraged. When Rush Limbaugh says something ludicrous and highly insulting he too should be condemned.
It’s interesting to see how some people talk about ’supporting the troops’ constantly, except for when those troops disagree with them.
Now, one can have a debate about whether or not soldiers should be involved in the public debate - the Generals, yes, the soldiers? I’d say no. They have to do what they’re told. I respect soldiers and appreciate what they’re doing, but soldiers serve and should never forget that it are not they who set the agenda.
In the Netherlands, an e-mail sent by a soldier in Afghanistan to a newspaper was published in that newspaper. Soldiers are not allowed to do that, so the letter was published anonymously. The soldier basically called on the government to withdraw the troops, because they weren’t rebuilding their country, they were only fighting. More, they were fighting against an enemy they couldn’t truly identify and who refused to wage open war.
Although these feelings are understandable, I do believe that soldiers should not send such a letter (and it’s also a bit strange that soldiers complain about having to fight). I respect them for what they’re doing - my nephew serves as well - but in the end, they serve their country and they’ve got to do what the government considers to be in the country’s best interest. Opposing a war isn’t something soldiers should do - at least not publicly. In fact, I believe they should be suspended / disciplined if they do. Seemingly, they refuse to carry out their job. No?
So, does calling for a withdrawal make them “phony soldiers”? No, of course not. Limbaugh was way out of line and should be criticized just as we all criticized MoveOn (although “traitor” is probably worse on the worsometer, “phony soldiers” is pretty bad too). But that doesn’t mean that I believe they should be free to call for it.
More at the All Spin Zone, Hullabaloo, and Think Progress. H/t Memeorandum.
Also read Rick Moran’s take on Limbaugh’s remarks. Rick notes that James Joyner and yours truly seem to be the only right-of-center bloggers who “come anywhere near my position.” I agree with Rick, indeed, that it’s likely that Limbaugh decided to ‘explain’ what he meant because he “realized the hot water he was in and tried to backtrack.”
Rick also notes that “Betray Us” is worse than “phony soldiers,” which may very well be true, but I don’t quite see how that’s the issue here: the issue isn’t MoveOn and who was worse. The issue is Limbaugh’s remarks.
Yes I thought it was slightly odd that the NYT op-ed was written by seven Sergeants on active duty. Sullivan asks if this piece will be criticized
This not a flap about what Rush Limbaugh said. This is a flap about how Media Matrers characterized what Limbaugh said. Transcripts for Limbaugh show are available on-line. Yet , Media Matters provides no links to Limbaugh.
Media Matters provides no evidence of what Limbaugh actually said, only what they claim he said. That is not nearly good enough.
Umh. I listened to his words at Think Progress.
What I read of the transcripts was he was saying that In times of political events, Democrats would haul out Soldiers to support their view, and that these Soldiers may not be soldiers at all.
Which is still a jackass thing to say, and he went on to ridicule one of his callers. On that point, whatever the caller had to know what would happen when he called in, and he probably wanted the exchange to happen.
Either way you look at it, it shows how Limbaugh can certainly be one big jackass.
From an initial glance, the Media Matters story does appear extremely misleading. Rush did not refer to the authors of the New York Times op-ed; conflating Limbaugh’s response to a radio caller who may or may not be what he claimed to be with an entirely unconnected op-ed from the New York Times erroneously suggests to the casual reader that Limbaugh was talking specifically about those soldiers as being “phony soldiers.”
More than once, the media has been taken in by phony stories about people who either didn’t exist or were not in fact soldiers. Here’s one. Here’s a lengthy CBS News / Weekly Standard piece devoted to phony soldiers, discussing what a real problem it is.
The caller said to Limbaugh: “They [the media] like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.” It was to this that Limbaugh replied: “The phony soldiers.” To me, that sounds like a specific reference to the fact that one doesn’t, one can’t really know whether the caller really is a soldier or not. Anybody can (and as discussed above, frequently do) claim to be a soldier.
The caller then says: “The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve.”
To which Limbaugh replies: “They joined to be in Iraq. … Well, you know where you’re going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you’re going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.”
In context, what he’s saying there is that it’s very unlikely that any soldier who joined within the past 4 years is opposed to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, because we were at war when they joined up.
Sure, Limbaugh could have been more precise, and he should have foreseen how his words might me misunderstood, but as I read that transcript, all I hear him talking about is actual phony soldiers.
The previous caller never specifically claimed to be a soldier. His actual words were: “CALLER 1: See, I — I’ve used to be military, OK? And I am a Republican.”
Having participated in a LOT of blog discussions, I’ve seen plenty of folks claim to be something they’re not to stir up trouble. There used to be a lot of DailyKos folks troll over to RedState and pretend to be a Republican, and plenty of RedState and LGFers who would do the same thing in reverse. Limbaugh was responding to a call by a guy who claimed he “used to be military” and was a Republican, but kept delivering what is primarily the Democratic line. Sure, it’s possible that he really was a Republican up until the war, but we’ve also seen plenty of examples of the media quoting a “prominent Republican” as supporting a Democrat, and then you find out that the guy has been raising money 10 to 1 for Democrats for his entire professional career, works as a trial lawyer, and hasn’t voted for a Republican since the first time he registered to vote.
To put it shorter, I think the context makes it pretty clear that Limbaugh was talking about actual phony soldiers, examples of which are well-documented. It’s certainly not clear that he was saying what his opponents are spinning this as.
I agree that the context Pat’s providing is somewhat important, but I still say that Limbaugh was wrong, not only because he’d obviously be interpreted in a certain way which should be avoided but also wrong in the way he categorically presumed that the caller wasn’t a ‘real Republican’. That reminded me of the Dems calling conservative blacks “Uncle Toms”. Real Republicans can have a variety of opinions on the war without being called unauthentic.
You’re certainly correct about that, CS, and one of the reasons I stopped visiting RedState very often was precisely because the regulars, supported by the powers that be, spent so much time and energy denouncing, in one form or another, commenters who weren’t “real Republicans,” simply because they didn’t go along with every single component of what the core RedStaters considered to be Real Republicanism.
But that said, there were plenty of real trolls coming along as well. It was quite annoying to wade through a post or comment that would begin “I’m a Republican, but…” and then proceed to read the twisted and distorted version of a Republican policy that was obviously written by a Democrat, because the twists and distortions were what the Democrats claimed the Republican policy was really for.
So it’s a real problem, which happens even more so on radio talk shows, even though both sides often overreact to it.
Nice try at taking Rush out of context. How do you live with yourselves?
So, when will republicans vote to condemn this?
Well lets see Xel,
I’m searching for the vote Condemning John Kerry
Then we can move onto Reid’s considerable Gaffe’s
Glass houses Xel, Glass Houses.
A recent phony soldier.
Do your research, you lazy media people. Rush was talking about Jesse MacBeth, who IS a phony soldier. He was a hero of the radical left wing after he claimed he was an Iraq vet. He was in fact a liar, and he has been convicted for his crime. Rush was talking about MacBeth and other Stolen Valor soldiers, not soldiers in general.
The transcript:
RUSH: It’s not possible intellectually to follow these people.
CALLER: No, it’s not. And what’s really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they’re proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they’re willing to sacrifice for the country.
RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.
CALLER: A lot of people.
RUSH: You know where you’re going these days, the last four years, if you sign up. The odds are you’re going there or Afghanistan, or somewhere.
CALLER: Exactly, sir. My other comment, my original comment, was a retort to Jill about the fact we didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction. Actually, we have found weapons of mass destruction in chemical agents that terrorists have been using against us for a while now. I’ve done two tours in Iraq, I just got back in June, and there are many instances of insurgents not knowing what they’re using in their IEDs. They’re using mustard artillery rounds, VX artillery rounds in their IEDs. Because they didn’t know what they were using, they didn’t do it right, and so it didn’t really hurt anybody. But those munitions are over there. It’s a huge desert. If they bury it somewhere, we’re never going to find it.
RUSH: Well, that’s a moot point for me right now.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: The weapons of mass destruction. We gotta get beyond that. We’re there. We all know they were there, and Mahmoud even admitted it in one of his speeches here talking about Saddam using the poison mustard gas or whatever it is on his own people. But that’s moot. What’s more important is all this is taking place now in the midst of the surge working, and all of these anti-war Democrats are getting even more hell-bent on pulling out of there, which means that success on the part of you and your colleagues over there is a great threat to them. It’s frustrating and maddening, and why they must be kept in the minority. I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much.
Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a “corporal.” I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn’t his Purple Heart; it wasn’t his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: “We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque.”
Now, recently, Jesse Macbeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse Macbeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse Macbeth isn’t an Army Ranger, never was. He isn’t a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven’t even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven’t heard much about it. This doesn’t fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don’t look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse Macbeth’s lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can’t find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.
umm that was already brought out Ape
Yeah, but that’s even better context that Ape brought out, Interested. I didn’t read far enough to see Limbaugh’s specific reference later on about Jesse Macbeth.
[...] that out of all the center right blogs who have covered this incident, only James Joyner and Michael van der Galiën come anywhere near my position. Ed Morrissey gives Limbaugh points for his “clarifying [...]
Look, an offhand comment quickly backed away from has no comparability with an ad in the NYT calling the C-in-C of forces in-country a traitor.
This is an Imus moment, not a conspiracy timed by a major newspaper with an ultra-left smear organization which is backing smear groups like Media Mutters.
Rick Moran likes occasionally to take a walk on the wild side, but the smear on O’Reilly & then the smear on Limbaugh are an orchestrated campaign by the RoteKappelle the Soros-cide left has instituted in the blogosphere.
Sure Rush said something stupid. But David Schuster set up a phony constituent on-air to question a MofC and absolutely nothing happened in the blogosphere.
This is naked aggression by the ultra-left and the next thing we know the “Fairness Doctrine,” an oxymoron with the best of them, will be the next Orwellian monstrosity that the left inflicts on the tax-paying public.
The O’Reilly smear was completely out of context and the Limbaugh thing might have been a set-up. This happens all the time with call-ins to Republican-leaning talk shows and usually the host is smart enough to call them out.
With all the fake articles by “soldiers” in TNR & elsewhere, Rush stupidly took the bait.
There is no comparision between Rush’s senior moment and the organized conspiracy that the NYT took part in with MoveOn, which is basically a Soros outfit.
It is certainly arguable that Limbaugh should have clarified immediately what he meant, but to me the context is clear. Rush is responding to the caller’s statement about “real” soldiers. Nobody thinks there are zero real soldiers against the war.
I’m not a Limbaugh fan whatsoever, but you should know that the report was incorrect, and should soon be withdrawing their statement. Check Limbaugh’s site for details.
Guys,
Two of the “phony soldiers” were killed in Iraq earlier this month. Guess they should just follow their generals blindly into war, huh?
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/12/82nd-soldiers/
Cliff: good point.
Listen, the Betray Us add was of a different level - I’m with Rick Moran on that - but that doesn’t mean that Limbaugh didn’t do anything wrong. These soldiers aren’t “phony soldiers.” They fight too
And die.
They’re very real soldiers. They should not, in my opinion, speak out publicly against a mission they’re ordered to carry out, but that doesn’t mean you can call them “phony soldiers.” The context doesn’t make it any better that two “phony soldiers” died in combat.
The point is simple: don’t use words or expressions like that.
He is not talking about real soldiers, he is talking about really phony soldiers like Jesse MacBeth as he goes on to explain.
Read what the caller said “…they never talk to real soldiers.”
So Rush riffs off that onto the phony soldiers, mentioning specifically Jesse MacBeth, who is certainly a phony soldier that the media were happy to talk to when he “came out of the blue”.
He’s not criticizing soldiers who are against the war. He’s criticizing “phony” soldiers who are against the war, and the media that accept their stories uncritically.
Cliff, that’s just wrong. Rush Limbaugh was NOT referring to the soldiers who wrote the NY Times article. Period. That conflation, as I pointed out above, was made solely by Media Matters.
Look at the context again, of the entire exchange. He was referring to actual phony soldiers, people who claim to be soldiers but who either or not or who served in the Army for 44 days. He referenced one of these phony soldiers by name.
[...] PoliBlog; Outside The Beltway (Right); Taylor Marsh; Thought Theater; Jules Crittendon (Right); The Van Der Galiën Gazette; Drudge [...]
Mr. Limbaugh, was referring to an actual Fake Soldier, Jesse MacBeth. That is the end of the Controversy. Done, No More Needs to be Said.
I read the transcript and I can’t agree with the notion Limbaugh was only referring to Jesse MacBeth. It’s possible that was the case but Mr. Limbaugh’s statements were well too vague to claim he was only referring to one man.
The way that conversation happened you can reasonably believe that Mr. Limbaugh was referring to soldiers who speak out in the media against the war. I know some on the right might not want to accept that but it is the case here.
Great blog entry and I agree with you.
Thanks Jason and that’s how I look at it as well.
[...] the right similar to what happened in regards to the left smearing Bill O’Reilly. Click this link to see a great blog entry on Rush Limbaugh referring to soldiers who oppose the war as “phony [...]
That may be how you look at it, Michael, but that’s not how it reads in the transcripts. The association between what Limbaugh said and the soldiers whose op/ed appeared in the NYT is purely that of the NYT. Limbaugh was specifically referring to Jesse MacBeth. The caller was responding to the rpevious day’s Jesse MacBeth update. It’s COMPLETELY clear in context that’s what the conversation was about–Jesse Macbeth and those like him. To tag it as anything else is dishonest selective citation.
The way that conversation happened you can reasonably believe that Mr. Limbaugh was referring to soldiers who speak out in the media against the war.
ONLY when taken and presented out of context. That a lazy or biased listener might take it that way if they caught just a portion of the total just indicates they really weren’t listening, or WANTED to taqke it out of context. (The first I can understand, as I can’t stand to listen to Limbaugh at all, but still….)
Frankly, to read it that way requires some genuine dedicated dowdification.
Just another case of the left-wing idiots, pissed about their MoveOn ad mess blowing up in their faces, trying to bash a conservative. Taking his comments totally out of context and spewing them all over the net. I happened to be listening during Rush’s entire show that day, and never ONCE did Rush mean all soldiers who disagree with the war are ‘phoney’. He was specifically talking about the group of soldiers that have spoken out about war atrocities and later been proven to not be soldiers at all. Anyone who actually listens to Rush’s entire segment and believes he was insulting actual soldiers is living in la-la-land. Hear what you want… the truth is what it is. Rush is a huge supporter of all the troops, always has been. The liberals hate him because he’s so right. So they attack. Typical.
Pathetic. MacBeth wasn’t mentioned until much later in the conversation. In addition Rush’s reference was most definitely in the plural, not singular.
How anyone can reasonably interpret any of that as referring only to MacBeth is beyond me. He had not been mentioned at this point by either Rush or his caller. Their references are general and plural. The caller repeatedly says that there are no real soldiers being talked to that disagree with the war. There is no other reasonable interpretation of his phrasing unless you’re working hard to provide Rush and his caller some cover.
The entire conversation was a direct reference to the Jesse Macbeth segment of previous day’s show, Jim. That’s what’s being left out. To ignore that is to assign an UNreasonable interpretation to his remarks. Weasel-parsing. And to attempt to hook it up the NYT editorial by the 82nd soldiers is a straight unmitigated smear on Media Matter’s part.
I don’t like Limbaugh either. He’s a pompous blowhard. But geez, he provides more than enough rope for hanging himself without anyone needing to make stuff up.
Betray us and phony soldiers are equally bad. Both should be condemned. Every time blowhards like Rush and Bill’o get in a little hot water they claim they’ve been taken out of context. Actually in O’R’s case, I think he actually was. But not Rush–the caller’s comment makes that clear:
CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they’re proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they’re willing to sacrifice for the country
Clear as a bell- real soldiers want to be in Iraq, phony soldiers don’t and might object to sacrificing their lives for a failing strategy.
BS attempt at asserting moral equivalence there, Kim. What the caller said is not what Limbaugh said. It was indeed taken out of context, and reducing the context even farther isn’t much of a trick. Dowdification.
Though I’m sure if you just wait a second, Limbaugh will be taking things Obama or Clinton said out of context, and doing a whole show on them. It is after all stock in trade for partisan pundits. Then you can beat away on him, and I’ll help you.
Boy, didn’t have to wait long. Did he really say that Media Matters and MoveOn.org produce most of “the content” for MSNBC? LMAO. Vast something-something wing conspiracy, here we come.
Limbaugh was talking about MacBeth. John Gibson exposes Media Matters here. Media Matters is as shameless and dishonest as MoveOn.org.
Here is the entire transcript.
Here is Limbaugh’s response.
Limbaugh clearly was saying that the left-wing anti-war crowd tends to seek out phony soldiers who fabricate atrocities (like Jesse MacBeth) for information, not that soldiers who opposed the war are phony.
Media Matters = phony controversies.
“I’m searching for the vote Condemning John Kerry
Then we can move onto Reid’s considerable Gaffe’s
Glass houses Xel, Glass Houses.”
I wasn’t throwing rocks, snarky. I was pointing out the uselessness of demanding the cessation of throwing from the other side.
“MacBeth wasn’t mentioned until much later in the conversation.”
That’s the impression I was given, too. MacBeth is truly an unrepresentative puppet, but even before his example he and the caller seemed to discuss troops unwilling to throw their lives away on the cripplingly flawed Iraq strategies as phony soldiers, non-soldiers.
“Media Matters is as shameless and dishonest as MoveOn.org.
The s-word! Yay.
Jesus! Stop taking other people’s word for things and listen to the whole thing. MacBeth was mentioned within a few words after the spot Media Matters chose to end the clip. You can listen to John Gibson’s commentary above where he provides the entire segment. Again, if people would take a few extra moments to listen to the entire segment rather than swallow Media Matters’ spin on things whole, then this would be obvious. (Limbaugh’s rebuttal addresses this very behavior out of leftists: they rely on Media Matters to find out what Limbaugh is saying and don’t bother visiting Limbaugh’s own site to double-check that Media Matters has gotten its facts straight. I don’t listen to Limbaugh or talk radio but even I was able to take a moment or two and determine the truth. That is apparently too difficult for your average liberal.) The Dowdification and intentional misunderstanding of other people’s quotes is a typical tactic of Media Matters. It’s as if they poured over transcripts of shows like Rush Limbaugh’s trying to find chunks of commentary that they could spin to mean something different than the commentator intended. They are simply unscrupulous.
Limbaugh was clearly commenting on the tendency of anti-war groups’ to seek out people who will give them false, highly exaggerated accounts of the war that they would like to hear (Jesse MacBeth in particular). He wasn’t saying all soldiers who disagree with the war aren’t real soldiers, just that left-wing groups rely upon phonies will sexier war crimes stories. His commentary was directed at those groups and not at soldiers at all. This is immediately evident to any honest listener of the ENTIRE segment. The fact that Media Matters chose to end the “phony soldiers” commentary right before the point where this is made obvious rather than give its readers the rest of the segment to judge for themselves the meaning of Limbaugh’s statement should tell you everything you need to know about Media Matters’ commitment to accuracy.
Joe Gandelman has a good post on this: click here.
Funny how Limbaugh calls anyone he disagrees with a “phony soldier,” such as Jack Murtha - I disagree with his politics often, but to call him a “phony soldier” is ludicrous, no?
That would be ludicrous (especially considering Murtha was a Marine not a soldier) but that isn’t what he said. He said that left-wing organizations seek out phony soldiers to bolster their view of the war, not that any soldier who disagrees with the war is phony. Media Matters is full of it.
Limbaugh is right to be angry in this case with the left and with the MSM: he’s got the likes of MSNBC bimbo Contessa Brewer reporting that he called military personnel opposing the war “phony soldiers” as a matter of fact not as a baseless charge or even as a controversy. MSNBC is taking Media Matters’, a liberal interest group’s, word for it.
I don’t know about these Media Matters/MSNBC collusion claims. John Gibson claims that Olbermann has been “lifting copy directly from Media Matters and sticking it in the teleprompter.” I haven’t been following these charges as I don’t listen to talk radio or watch Olbermann. It seems evident to me that MSNBC is left-leaning, however, took Media Matters’ side in this phony controversy.
To quote Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?”
Someone said that it was clear what Rush was truly talking about. I just wonder how can a general and broad statement be given a precise meaning by someone. Rush generalized and when you generalize you live yourself wide open for someone to nail you. I personally think that Rush is a “for me or against me” guy regardless which is something that is really scary in people sometimes. No that we should not stand up against this or be afraid and speak our minds.
First of all this has been one of the most enlightening talkbacks on this subject that I have seen.
Now to the matter at hand:
For years Rush has done exactly what he is now accusing that the left and media are doing to him to him regarding his phony soldier comment.
Taking his words out of context.
Making twisted and tortured arguments to smear him.
Etc
I have never liked Rush for these reasons. Every time I listen to him he engages in twisting the words of those who disagree with him, making tortured arguments to smear others.
I have heard him predict that events would go one way and when they didn’t, I have heard him take credit for saying that he predicted that events would go the way they did even though previously he had said otherwise.
I have heard him quote news sources to justify his points, only to check those very same sources myself to find out that completely twisted what those sources had to say.
He continually over generalizes, puts into broad categories, and even de-humanizes (not to mention demonize) those who oppose or disagree with him.
And I would guess that this is why Liberals don’t like him either (which is not to say that there aren’t Liberals who do the same thing). Not because they disagree with him, not because (as some have stated) they can’t wrap their brains around what he is saying. But because of the dirty tricks he plays with language and his fallacies of debate.
But having said all this, and having read the transcript posted earlier (And I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that this transcript is true and correct) I will also (unless someone can prove otherwise) taking into account (as stated earlier) that he was also making reference to a previous segment on the show regarding that “one” soldier who really was a phony.
I would say that based on all of this, that there is a very good case that Rush was indeed quoted out of context in order to smear him.
But if he does end up being hanged for this, I would call it Poetic Justice.
Because he’s been doing this for years.
I have to agree with TJ on some of the things said about Rush. BUT if you listen to what he is saying as entertainment and not as true political commentary, some of what he “takes out of context” is done in attempts at being humorous.
As for this one particular comment, anyone who listens to Rush’s show more than one will see that he often refers to previous shows or commentary without going into detail - especially if a caller brings it up.
So long free speech.
Should congress take action against those whose speech they find offensive? Read the first amendment before you answer.
The Senate resolution mentions Rush Limbaugh by name and they took action against him by writing his employer a letter. The House resolution mentions Limbaugh by name too.
The Senate resolution in support of General Petraeus does not mention Moveon.Org by name nor did they take action. It was still wrong.
So long to free speech it was nice while it lasted.
Silence Dogood
Well, Ben Franklin as far as “free speech” goes and our constitutional rights, well they started flying out the door under the watch of your guy George W. Bush. (Yes- they did.) And I always find it interesting the majority of these Republican right-wingers that publicly criticize those Americans soldiers that disagree with them on the Iraq war have never actually served in the military themselves. I just find that very interesting and hypocritical. Oh, and let’s not forget the ever popular tag that they use of “unpatriotic” when someone opposes war and killing. Unbelievable. We live in very dangerous times in this country. Very dangerous indeed.
This controversy will blow over…
What you are all missing is that Rush is just a Commentator…not a Policy-maker, or anyone who carries those Policies out.
This controversy ups his ratings.
Publicity…is his stock-in-trade!
ED.