but they’re wrong.

For instance, it never occurred to me in my wildest dystopian dream that I would ever read the following defense of government action, outside of a libertarian novel:

“No court,” said Solicitor General Paul Clement in his brief, has “ever recognized a constitutional right against retaliation . . . in the context of property rights.”

In other words, if the government asks you to do something you have the perfect legal right to refuse to do, and they proceed to harrass you and use their powers to punish you for your decision (including, in this case, bringing you to court on false charges), then they have done nothing wrong. Sure, we all know it is evil to retaliate against, say, a political activist for articulating views that the government opposes. But property rights, aren’t really protected. The First Amendment matters; the Fifth is dispensible.
From listening to the podcast, it seems as if some Supreme Court Justices are seriously committed to the idea that while they will defend the rights of the KKK and pornographers to be free to recruit children or whatever else seems progressive to do these days, if you want to keep and control your property you are in danger of destroying the foundations of society.

Listen to the interview and read the Legal Times piece.

There isn’t one.

What should be a great empirical fact is that shortages and a decrepit economy were caused by political factors and blamed on natural factors.  It was the environment.  It was over-population.  It was “malaise.” These things caused the economic crisis and long lines waiting to get some gas.

We were assured this was simply the natural order, that we were using up resources.  And it was all false.  These shortages just sort of vaporized after new political policies were put in place.

It seems so incredible now that people would explain the disaster of the late seventies using psychological mumbo-jumbo. No wonder we needed a cheerleader like Reagan.

“Heal you? Get out of bed! You’re not even sick.”

If you’re feeling bad about your life, here’s something to help you out. Except for the part where you weep for the family and realize what sort of legal culture we live in.

Once you’re capable of moving past the Please-tell-me-this-is-a-Stephen-King-novel reaction, and other associated responses, don’t suppress the memory of the story, before you savor the irony of the woman’s attorney saying, “When the statute is named ‘Patients Right To Know,’ I don’t know how it could be clearer.”

Hah!

It is a virtual industry in this country to name a piece of legislation deceptively. For all I know from the article the entire move to make the amendment in the Florida Constitution was financed by the medical industry to make it easier to hide themselves.

As for me, I’m having a flashback to our last child’s delivery. The anesthesiologist utterly botched the epidural and we got what our obgyn slipped up and admitted was an unnecessary C-section. That night there were tornadoes outside and they could reach our doctor when they were making the decision. The staff was standing their in front of me furtively whispering, plainly trying to converse without me overhearing. Jennifer was crying because she was in pain, suffering from perceptual distortions of what amounted to a bad drug trip, and afraid we were going to lose Charis. They told me they had to operate. The doctor who had messed up Jennifer in the first place put his arms on me and told me I needed to let them do this and I couldn’t be present while they operated. I was shaking.

And my one point of rationality for those few minutes was that the Doctors were the professionals and I should trust them. I had to trust them.

Someone is going to be in my position who has read this story or something like it. And the next morning we’ll all read in the newspaper about a far different outcome. As for me, once everything turned out relatively all right and Charis was healthy, Jennifer and I dismissed the idea of suing out of hand. But I’ll never dismiss the idea again.

My point is that, if you’re a doctor, your life can be affected more than you know by this kind of press. You should make a point of standing against it. The hospital needs to give up their records.

If you’re a blogger, please link and comment on the article.

PS. I just realized how old this story is? I assume there was some sort of resolution and the hospital gave up her records. In any case, there is virtually nothing else out there about her this except this story.

PPS.  Here’s a collection of del.icio.us notes and here’s a google blog search. Finally, technorati’s list.