Conservative Latinos are on the air

He was never as famous at "Joe the Plumber," but "Tito the Builder" also made a name for himself on the 2008 campaign trail by challenging Obama's "spread the wealth" agenda. During an election in which Latinos overwhelmingly voted Democrat, registered Republican Tito Munoz stood out due to his Hispanic ancestry.

These days, Munoz spreads his patriotic, pro-capitalism message on talk radio. A group of California small-business owners have organized the Conservative Hispanic Coalition, and Munoz's new Saturday radio program, "America Eres Tu", is one of its projects.

Meanwhile in Texas, Conservative Latino Talk Radio offers daily programs hosted by Lauro Garza, who focuses on "reintroducing Latinos to the Republican party and vice versa."

While these voices are still heard mostly at the periphery, they're a much-needed addition to the conservative talk-radio chorus.

Rush Limbaugh

Rush opened the broadcast week with an arresting declaration:

"Once in a while – it doesn't happen very often – once in a while you stumble across an article, an essay that demands to be widely disseminated," Rush said. "This one that I stumbled across is from the July-August issue of the American Spectator, and the title is: 'America's Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution.' It's by Angelo Codevilla."

Rush analyzed the timely essay for most of the program – sending so many listeners over to the American Spectator website that their servers crashed.

As WND reported earlier, a Daily Caller investigation revealed that some mainstream journalists plotted via an exclusive e-mail listserv to bury stories about candidate Obama's longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in 2008.

In subsequent JournoList transcripts, a public-radio producer made jokes about Rush Limbaugh's heart condition and fantasized about watching him die – a message she presumably typed on a computer provided to her by taxpayers.

Contacted by the Washington Examiner for comment, Limbaugh responded, "Funny thing ... a number of my friends sent me the Daily Caller piece, and the most shocking thing to them in the story was the advocacy of having government shut down Fox News. That the left wants me dead was not a big deal to them because it was nothing new to them. I think that's hilarious. And about that: How about the law professor who thinks the FCC can pull Fox's license? Fox does not have a license. The FCC does not grant Fox its right to exist. And this guy teaches law."

Sean Hannity

Hannity and his guests devoted much of the week to the scandal surrounding Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod. A videotape acquired by Andrew Breitbart showed Sherrod supposedly giving a "racist" speech to an NAACP meeting, but questions about context led some commentators to retract their original condemnations.

Accused along with other Fox News personalities with campaigning to get Sherrod fired, Hannity pushed back on his Wednesday radio show.

"Just to give you a little timeline here," Sean said to listeners, "by the time I took the air Tuesday night, Shirley Sherrod had already been fired. They made their own decision based on the tape."

In a new feature that other talk-radio shows should imitate, Sean Hannity now posts "Caller of the Day" audio clips on his website. These are pretty entertaining (and often unintentionally funny) (FREE audio).

Mark Levin

Taking his cue from an article in the Beltway newspaper The Hill, Levin informed listeners that "centrist" Republicans were hoping to make gains in the 2010 and thereby undermine the influence of the tea parties (FREE audio).

An Australian tourist to America called into Levin's show this week.

"Is your country going to hell too?" Mark asked.

The caller replied (FREE audio), "Unfortunately, we are further down the road of socialism. Australians live under more structured type of lifestyles because of more government in our lives. It has been that way for the last 30 or 40 years, which is going more and more down the road, and as I was telling someone I met in Nashville a couple days ago, if America loses its way, I'm afraid there's no hope for the rest of us."

Levin also played the complete recording of Shirley Sherrod's contentious speech to the NAACP and discussed its implications with media watchdog Brent Bozell (FREE audio).

Michael Savage

This week, Andrew Breitbart's new website, Big Peace, devoted a story to Michael Savage's continued travails with the British government, which has banned him from entering the country.

Peter Schweizer observes, "It's pretty clear that Savage is on the list because the British government, wanting to prevent certain jihadists from entering the country to preach violence and terrorism, were desperately looking for a 'moral equivalent' that they could prop up as proof that they are not anti-Muslim. In Savage they found a convenient person. But to compare Savage to jihadists is ridiculous."

Also asking "Who's Afraid of Michael Savage?" is Dr. Grace Vuoto, the executive director of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal. In a lengthy essay, she declared that "the case of Mr. Savage marks a low point in the history of the English-speaking peoples."

Savage's opening monologue on July 21 concerned what he called "the Breitbart affair." Savage believes that the government purposely fed the Sherrod tape to Breitbart in order to discredit the conservative online media mogul (FREE audio).

Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham opened the week by welcoming "Tito the Builder" to the world of talk radio. She also dissected the Daily Caller's expose on the JournoList email archives and kept listeners up to date on the evolving Sherrod/Breitbart controversy (FREE audio).

In a lengthy interview, Ingraham and Governor Rick Perry of Texas discussed federal inaction on illegal immigration. Perry told Ingraham that Obama's promise to send only 250 additional border guards to Texas was "an affront," considering the state's border with Mexico is 1,200 miles long. He also explained his opposition to the Arizona immigration law, which he said has been misreported by the media (FREE audio).

Glenn Beck

It was news to many people, even those in the broadcasting industry, but not to regular Glenn Beck listeners: the host has been diagnosed with macular dystrophy and has been told by doctors that he may lose his eyesight.

Beck and his crew have been joking about it for a few weeks now, but in a speech last weekend, he was more somber, telling the audience, "I can't focus my eyes" (FREE video):

The New York Times praised Glenn Beck for refusing to "rush to judgment" on the Sherrod case, while webcam footage of Glenn and his crew mocking Keith Olbermann's pompous monologue of the affair went viral (FREE video).

And now, from the left side of the dial ...

Do most of Mike Malloy's listeners hear him only when he's criticized by "Radio Equalizer" Brian Maloney?

This week, Maloney caught the increasingly unhinged satellite radio "lib talker" calling upon Glenn Beck to "fulfill the family tradition" – and commit suicide (FREE audio).

Another example of the caring, compassionate left in action!