A Private Right of Crime. Rush Limbaugh, talk-radio darling of the Radical Right, tried to get away with "doctor shopping" for painkillers not by proving that he didn't do it, but by asserting that his medical records are private. Never mind that the only way prosecutors could find out for sure if Rush had violated the law is by looking at his medical records. Limbaugh claims that government has no right to look at records that could convict him, because they're private! In effect, his criminal behavior is to be shielded by his right of privacy.
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The Supreme Court of Florida — they're in the news a lot nowadays, aren't they? — didn't buy it. Limbaugh's listeners apparently did, since he's still on the air.
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Now the case can proceed on the merits.
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Why aren't rightwingers indignant about a drug addict's asserting a private right of crime? If Jane Fonda or Ted Kennedy tried to dodge the law by asserting their behavior cannot be investigated because their records are private, the Right would have a field day, whooping with Righteous indignation. But when one of their own asserts a private right of crime, they say nothing.
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Martha Stewart was sent to prison not for what she did but for trying to hide what she did. She was not a political person asserting supposedly principled stands and telling the world what to think and do. Rush Limbaugh should be held not to a lesser standard but to a higher standard.
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It may be all very Christian to forgive his 'weakness' in this 'very personal matter', but I don't see the same forgiveness for heroin or crack addicts in the ghetto. Shouldn't one size fit all in morality? Or are we to have two moralities, one for the Right, and one for everybody else?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,574.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:06 PM