The "Rush" to Judgment

Much is being made - mostly by right-wing sites and shows like Joe Scarbrough on MSNBC - of a report by a Florida newspaper that their investigation shows that only one person has been charged in recent history with so-called "doctor shopping" (where you attempt to get the same prescription from multiple doctors), related to the case of Rush Limbaugh.

But when did Rush get charged with doctor shopping? To the best of my knowledge, he has not been. Instead, Florida officials are trying to investigate whether Rush was involved in that practice. I know it's fun to beat your chest and make your case seem more desperate and unfair, but shouldn't you wait to beat and scream once he is charged, if he ever is?

And that's the point, at least here. Rush may never be charged with doctor shopping. But the difference between Rush's case and probably so many other drug cases is that Rush has the legal team and money to keep the prosecutors from actually reviewing the records they subpoena'd in order to make this decision whether to go forward.

I can't help but imagine that if anyone else had been in possession of more than 2,000 pills (and perhaps far more than that, according to some press reports), it wouldn't matter if the pills were Paxil or Oxycontin: a prosecutor could certainly levy charges of possession with intent to distribute/sell. You wouldn't have to go forward on charges of doctor shopping or money laundering or improper possession of a controlled substane without a prescription, although you might be able to do so. The mandatory minimums the conservatives love to endorse would seem appropriate for keeping someone who horded pills like that behind bars even without any additional charges.

But then, that's another difference between Rush and other cases - a point we saw in the case of Lauren Bush, Jeb's daughter, in her attempt to falsify a prescription for Xanax and then being found with contraband at the treatment center. Money and connections will get you into a treatment center; the rest will go to jail for as long as a mandatory minimum can demand.

And yet Rush - who insisted that enough white people weren't doing hard time for drug crimes and they should be found out and locked away - has not been booked and printed, not spent a second in jail, and has managed to keep prosecutors from so much as reviewing his medical records.

Do I think Rush needs to do 15 years in prison? Hey, I have to admit the imagery makes me grin but no. Addicts deserve treatment. They deserve it whether they're Rush Limbaugh, Darryl Strawberry, or some Joe or Janet no one's ever heard of without money and connections.