Doing Hillery's Work Before Her Coronation

Now that GWB has become a Lame Duck, he's decided to kiss up to the next President by anticipating some of the things she'll want enacted, and doing them for her. Maybe he wants a job at the UN, so he can work alongside his new ol' buddy, Bill.

Today, in another step down the path toward the Fourth Reich, Bush signed a bill into law that will set up a nationwide monitoring system for prescription drugs. Read the whole sordid story here.

As more than one attentive libertarian observer has noted: GWB is on a path to enact all of HilleryCare before Hillery gets another chance. He's getting pretty close.

What the bill does is open your (and my) prescription records to the scrutiny of federal snoops so they can tell if you're "doctor shopping." Nobody knew what doctor shopping was until Rush Limbaugh was caught alledgedly doing it to increase the amount of pain killer he was taking to help with the severe back pain he was experiencing a couple of years ago. I can hardly blame him: I've been trying to get my doctor to prescribe more Quaaludes for years.

This all came about after the feds started threatening and fining doctors for prescribing too many pain killers. Doctors got so gunshy that it was really hard to get pain killers at all. Individuals in severe pain would obviously become so desperate as to get pain killers any way they could. This is a federal government-manufactured problem. An unintended consequence of a previous intereference into the way some of us might choose to solve a problem.

Once again, let's look in our handy-dandy Cato pocket US Constitution. Where does it say that government can overrule a medical doctor's decision as to how to treat a patient? Where does it say that government can decide how much or what kind of treatment an individual can take for his own self-medication? Well, it sure is hard to find! It must be right next to the clause that gives government the right to decide for you what foods and recreational substances you're allowed to ingest: In the scrap-heap of really bad ideas!

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!
Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California