Why Hasn’t Anyone Changed the 9th Circuit?

RUSH: Let’s go to Surprise, Arizona. Line one, that is. Surprise, Arizona. Kansas City Royals train there, by the way, a couple of other Major League Baseball teams. This is Robert. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. I’ve been listening for 15 years, and I love it.

RUSH: Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I have a question. In all the changes in administrations through the years, why does the Ninth Circuit remain so liberal?

RUSH: Well, let me take a stab at this. One of the reasons is that for the eight years of the Clinton administration, there were a couple or three, vacancies there, and of course they got populated with Clinton appointees. The left has a claim on the Ninth Circuit, and if a Republican president tries to nominate a Republican there, a bunch of parliamentary maneuvers are utilized to stop it. Senators could put holds on the nomination for any reason without having to announce why and without even having to identify who they are placing the hold. What generally happens in the back-and-forth and bargaining of Washington — this is not the total explanation — is that the left, the libs will say to the Republicans, “Look, we want our guy on the Ninth Circuit, and we’ll back out of the way and let you have your guy on some other circuit.” The Ninth Circuit is huge. I mean, the fact that it encompasses all of California alone makes it huge.

George Will has a column, and I’m trying to recall it. George Will wrote a piece and basically said we need two Supreme Courts. We need one Supreme Court to deal with appeals from the Ninth Circuit and another Supreme Court to deal with all the other cases, because there are so many appeals that come from the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court overturns the vast majority of them. So whatever they do out there ends up getting overturned, but the left just has a lock on it. You could almost look at that and say, ‘Why does the left have a lock on academe, higher education?’ There was a story on the front page of USA Today a couple days ago. Congress, the Democrats, Pelosi and this crowd announced they’re going to have the most ethical Congress in history — and they came up with a whole bunch of new regulations and rules that take away some of the privileges members of Congress have, such as from whom they can accept charter air flights and from whom they can accept gifts and from whom they can accept financial assistance and so forth. There are a lot of exemptions that are now in the law. There are a lot of new restrictions.

There was one major exemption to these new ethical rules, and it is this. There are no restrictions on members of Congress accepting travel offered by major universities. Major universities can pay to have congressmen fly all over the country, all over the world, for speeches, lectures, to come in and do whatever. There’s a little symbiotic relationship with Congress: “We’re going to increase the deduction that you get for tuition on your tax return.”

Everybody reacts, “Yay! Tax cuts for tuition! We love education!’

But that just allows major universities to raise tuition. It’s symbiotic, and the same thing is with the left and the Ninth Circus.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s the money quote for the George Will column on the Ninth Circus in relation to the Supreme Court that I just referenced. “There should be two Supreme Courts, one to reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the other to hear all other cases. Last term, 18 of the court’s 82 cases (22 percent) came from the liberal 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, and the 9th was reversed in 15 of the 18. The 9th’s winning percentage (.167) was worse than that of the 1962 Mets (.250). On Monday, in the first decision of this term, the Supreme Court reversed the 9th’s fretfulness on behalf of Fernando Belmontes,” blah, blah, blah, blah. So those are the details.