Rush Limbaugh will be on the air for at least eight more years, and he’ll get paid a fortune for it: more than $400 million, including a $100 million signing bonus, according to a new deal he signed this week. After nearly 20 years in national syndication, Limbaugh still attracts a huge audience – nearly 20 million weekly listeners.
The New York Times magazine has a long profile of Limbaugh. It notes how he is an American icon, but that his fans and critics don’t agree on what he is iconic for. The article reports: “Serious people have called him a serial liar and a moral philosopher, a partisan hack and a public intellectual, nothing more than a radio windbag and nothing less than the heart of the Republican Party.”
The U.S. economy lost more than 60,000 jobs last month, mostly from manufacturing and construction companies. It was the sixth consecutive month the economy has shed jobs, for a total of about 438,000 jobs since the first of the year.
After six months and many tax dollars, and legal wrangling that went all the way to the Kansas Supreme Court and back, the grand jury investigating Wichita abortion provider George Tiller dissolved Wednesday having found insufficient evidence to bring so much as a single indictment. Zip. Nada.
The grand jury, which had been forced to convene by citizen petition, said that the Tiller medical records it reviewed revealed some “questionable late-term abortions” with regard to whether they meet the state law’s requirement that continuing the pregnancy would cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function. But as the panel determined correctly, “the woman’s condition is the subject for a medical judgment, not a legal one”; if two independent physicians say the late-term abortion is necessary, the abortion is lawful, period.
So contrary to all the claims and rhetoric of pro-life activists, Tiller is following the law (provided the doctors are independent, which is the subject of another case), and there is no conspiracy by the Sedgwick County district attorney or Kansas attorney general keeping him “above the law.”
Eight years ago, American voters chose the presidential candidate they’d most like to have a beer with. Now an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll has put the current contenders to the barbecue test, and Barack Obama bested John McCain 52 to 45 percent as the candidate voters would most like to invite to a cookout. Men split pretty evenly on the question, but women favored Obama by 11 percentage points. Maybe the majority missed hearing about McCain’s love of barbecue (“Nothing makes me happier,” he has said) and Memorial Day grillfest at his Arizona ranch.
The Kansas Supreme Court’s decision extending the right to jury trials to juvenile defendants has courts reeling statewide. But it may not mean much to the 16-year-old defendant in the case, which was returned to Finney County District Court for a new trial. The teen, who had been sentenced to 18 months for aggravated sexual battery and possessing alcohol, since has been indicted in federal court on identity theft and faces deportation.
Rush Limbaugh will be on the air for at least eight more years, and he’ll get paid a fortune for it: more than $400 million, including a $100 million signing bonus, according to a new deal he signed this week. After nearly 20 years in national syndication, Limbaugh still attracts a huge audience – nearly 20 million weekly listeners.
