In the News...
A Florida judge has decided that staff members at a drug rehab center don't have to answer police questions about a client's drug possession. It was viewed as a significant victory for privacy rights, which is all well and good, but it's hard to see how society's rights are met. Why should they be allowed to remain silent in a legitimate police investigation? I mean, aren't the police there to protect the community? Even if, as I've said before in this space, I believe that drug laws should be stricken from the books -- along with gambling and prostitution laws -- while they're still the law, it's unwise to let segments of the population be exempt. By the way, the ruling came in the case of Noelle Bush, daughter of the gov, niece of the prez.
Speaking of bad decisions, seems like some doozies were made back during the Reagan-Rumsfeld years. A coupla dusty reports have been brought to light that indicate that our government handed over biological agents -- including anthrax, botulism, and West Nile virus -- to Iraq. Such irony, n'est-ce pas? According to the reports, the decision to send to our now-mortal enemies these potential weapons of our own destruction were considered naive (at best) at the time, and but was justified because Iraq was fighting Iran at the time, and we hated them more.
It's no wonder that we don't have a whole lotta faith in our government. If only because the best of the best went into business -- e.g., WorldCom, Tyco, Enron, Andersen, Global Crossing, etc. -- and left us with to fill our government with people who couldn't make it in the more lucrative private sector. Blessed be the top law firms that weren't saddled with the yahoos who gave Zacarias Moussaoui top secret government documents by mistake. Because of this tiny slip, Moussaoui has gotten himself another trial extension, complaining that he has been overwhelmed by all the documents the government gave him, and then had his trial preparation disrupted when the government came back to retrieve the once-secret ones.
Avoiding prison -- in part, no doubt, because of similarly-deficient prosecution -- has been Senator Robert Torricelli, who is also going to avoid being defeated in a re-election bid. The Torch used to have a big lead in the New Jersey voter polls, but then a whole bunch of ethics issues surfaced which even the all-forgiving U.S. Senate had to waggle a finger at, oopsy-doopsy, Torricelli's lead began to slip-slide away. Will this hurt the Dems' hopes of holding onto the Senate? Sho 'nuf, but enough is enough, sometimes even for politicians.
The Dems could still win, of course, if they would remember James Carville's slogan in the '92 Clinton presidential effort. "It's the economy, stupid." It's again the economy, stupid, and everybody seems to get that but the Democratic leaders. The S&P 500 and the Dow both closed their worst quarters since the Crash of '87. And just 'cause the quarter is done, that doesn't mean the free-fall is gonna stop. Why should it? The Bushies aren't doing anything about the economy. The Democrats are so awful they don't deserve to win, but the public doesn't deserve an unfettered Bush-Lite pogrom.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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