Chief Justice Junkquist


Inspired by Holden C at First Draft...

Lenny Bruce once said, "If heroin is a monkey on the back, what's a morphine suppository?"

Why, it's Bill Rehnquist, of course:

The documents show that the FBI was aware in 1971 that Rehnquist had owned a home in Phoenix with a deed that allowed him to sell only to whites. The restrictive covenant was not disclosed until his 1986 confirmation hearings, at which Rehnquist said he became aware of the clause only days earlier.

Also detailed in the declassified file was Rehnquist's 1981 hospital stay for treatment of back pain and his dependence on powerful prescription pain-relief medication.

The FBI investigated his dependence on Placidyl, which Rehnquist had taken for at least 10 years, according to a summary of a 1970 medical examination.

When Rehnquist checked into a hospital in 1981 for a weeklong stay, doctors stopped administering the drug, causing what a hospital spokesman at the time said was a ``disturbance in mental clarity.''

The FBI file, citing one of his physicians, said Rehnquist experienced withdrawal symptoms that included going to the hospital lobby in his pajamas in a bid to escape. He imagined that there was a Central Intelligence Agency plot against him, and he also seemed to discern changes in the patterns on the hospital curtains.

Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his room discussing various plots against him.

You know, if this was only a matter of the former Chief Justice being a drug addict, that'd be one thing--I'm no innocent babe in the woods when it comes to legal addiction (tobacco dependence...I'm trying to wean myself off the stuff) and, ahem, other delights of the garden, lab, or distillery. In fact, I'd be inclined to have a degree of sympathy for the man (hell, I'd even cut genuine cretin Rush Lamebone some slack...though I guess Rush is trying to cut OUT the slack with surreptitious Viagra). But again, this is a matter of hypocrisy so extreme, well...it could only be GOP, i.e., compassion and understanding for me, but not for thee.

How many people had their appeals of draconian sentences for drug crimes upheld--either actively or via denial of certiorari--by the stoner Junkquist court? Even more times, no doubt, than the many examples of moral "arbiters" of public decency like Lamebone, Bill Bennett, Jimmy Swaggert, or Ted Haggard revealed as charlatans, liars, frauds, or worse.

Barack Obama admits to having tried cocaine, and the wingnut spin machine cackles in delight--Shrub's quite evident history with the stuff--and his admitted chronic boozing--are dismissed by the same.

And, not entirely off-topic, but the Democratic Party hasn't been in control of Congress for a day...yet the GOP is already whining about so-called understandings that Digby reminds us (here and in his latest post) were never agreed to in the first place.

Cheap-assed, elitist whiners...OK, if that's how they wanna be...

Call them the Franzia Party--cheap white wine in a box...for cheap white whiners.