Day: June 16, 2005

Sounds like Rush Limbaugh has plenty to hide in his “doctor-shopping” investigation.

Palm Beach Post:

“Many of the things in these records deal with medical procedures, symptoms, things that are potentially embarrassing for my client to be released,” [Superstar lawyer Roy] Black told the judge. “They are very intimate matters, discussed with his doctors, which are not within the scope of the warrant.”

Wow. Really makes you want to see them, doesn’t it? If you looked through my medical records, the only embarrassing thing you’d find is how much I really weigh. Wonder why Rush has so much more to worry about?

The issue, of course, is whether Rush, whom we already know is a recovering (we hope) drug addict, went to doctors to support his habit. Unless you’re Elvis, it’s hard to believe one doctor would give you enough meds to feed your addiction, or that Rush would have never broken any laws in order to stay hopped up.

Limbaugh, 54, of Palm Beach, has not been charged with a crime. He acknowledges an addiction to painkillers but says he did not doctor-shop.

Doctor-shopping — seeking duplicate prescriptions from different doctors — is a felony, but almost never prosecuted in Palm Beach County.

Well, isn’t it lucky that Rush lives in one of the most privileged areas of the country, where anyone can get pretty much anything as long as they have the cash? But it still boils down to this: either Rush lied to his doctors, Rush did in fact doctor-shop, or Rush goes to doctors who should be prohibited from practice.

In court filings, Black pointed out that all but six of the prescriptions in the records came from two Jupiter doctors who practice in the same office. “There can be no doctor-shopping between them,” Black wrote.

[Judge] Barkdull denied the request but said Black was free to file it again.

Yeah, sure, file some more bogus injunctions. Rush and Roy have tried about every trick in the book to get out of ‘fessing up and getting this over with. When it suits their cause, they say Rush is being unfairly targeted because he’s a celebrity (not a journalist, mind you); when it doesn’t they say, as a public figure, he should have special protection because his records could embarrass him and threaten his career.

Isn’t part of the 12-step program admitting you did wrong?

USA Today reports that a cabal of Christianist extremist groups that includes the Family Research Council, American Values, Focus on the Family, Free Congress and American Family Association have announced they will jointly interrogate Republican candidates for president in 2008 in order to find one whose ideology is sufficiently pure to receive their endorsement.

Candidates who seek anoinment from these pashas of the pulpit will have to prove that they are bigots and debunkers of science on issues that range from whether or not to apply the death penalty to gays and lesbians to whether or not to apply the death penalty to doctors who perform abortions.

While the mullahs of the American Right expect wingnut candidates to line up for inspection, some political observers aren’t so sure being the talibanis’ Chosen One would be a good move politically:

Being seen as the “candidate of the Christian right” would be a “very, very mixed blessing” in the general election, said Stuart Rothenberg of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report— akin to Walter Mondale’s stamp as the “candidate of labor” in the 1984 campaign.

“That would really pigeonhole a candidate,” Rothenberg said.