Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Republican Uses Foul Means to Beat Rap”

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July 12, 2006

Republican Uses Foul Means to Beat Rap

Hatched by Dafydd

Heh, I'm a little late on this story. I actually wrote a stub... then plum forgot to come back and finish it up! So forewarned, here goes.

"Limbaugh won't face charges over Viagra found in his possession," the headline ominously declares.

Well dang, it's another example of how the rich can just buy their way out of legal troubles. There's that drug addict caught red-handed smuggling in another controlled substance, Viagra (well, it's not really controlled; but you know what I mean). He's detained by customs, and the antique media gleefully whisper that this could be it for the venerable Republican, the poster boy for hypocrisy.

Here he is, always going on about how heroin addicts and crackheads should be arrested... and then he's caught violating his "deal with prosecutors" by being found in possession of prescription drugs without a prescription:

Rush Limbaugh will likely have to wait several days to find out if he violated his deal with prosecutors in a prescription fraud case when authorities found him with Viagra that was apparently prescribed to someone else, a spokesman for the state attorney's office said Tuesday.

Limbaugh, 55, was detained for more than three hours Monday at Palm Beach International Airport after he returned on his private plane from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. Customs officials found Viagra in his bag, but his name wasn't on the prescription, Palm Beach County sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said.

The Trib intoned:

Federal agents referred the case to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. Prosecutors are looking into whether Limbaugh violated an agreement he struck two months ago.

Prosecutors in late April charged him with deceiving two or more doctors to write simultaneous prescriptions for pain pills. They agreed to drop the charge after 18 months if Limbaugh completed substance-abuse treatment.

Yet after all that, a couple of quick phone calls from Limbaugh's attorney, et voilà, he's sprung! Worse, now he has somehow bought his way even out of being prosecuted. Is there no end to his perfidy?

What technicality did Roy Black use to weasel his client's way out of such a clear and obvious violation of his parole -- er -- probation -- well, whatever you call the deal he struck with the DA to avoid prosecution in the doctor-shopping case?

I'm sure it was exactly the sort of legal loophole that he so often decries when poor and downtrodden bank robbers and terrorists slide through them. But boy, when the shoe is on the other hand, look who jumps through the hoop!

Aha, I think we've found it. Here is the legal loophole, via the Sun Sentinel link above, by which Limbaugh avoided being charged with possession of a prescription drug without having a prescription for it:

Saying Rush Limbaugh's Viagra prescription was legally prescribed, the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office announced on Wednesday that it would not file charges against the conservative radio talk show host for possessing medication in someone else's name.

But Miami-Dade prosecutors will review the file and decide whether charges are warranted against the two Miami doctors involved, according to Assistant State Attorney Paul Zacks. To protect Limbaugh's privacy, his medical doctor prescribed the erectile dysfunction drug to Limbaugh's psychologist, according to Limbaugh's affidavit.

Well... dang. All right, so maybe he had a legal prescription. Can't we prosecute him anyway? After all, he was found in possession of drugs, for Pete's sake. He's always saying drugs are so bad; so put him in jail, already. ITMFA! (In this instance, the "I" stands for imprison, not impeach.)

At the very least, we must be able to prosecute his co-conspirators, the doctors who got him the Viagra in another person's name, in a flagrant attempt to flout the First Amendment guarantee that the elite news media shall always be apprised, by law, of any embarassing fact about a conservative. Just think how much mocking time they missed, not being able to make Limbaugh-Viagra jokes for weeks and weeks, before finally finding out via the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services... who kindly dropped a dime to the media.

Alas, this AP story has more on that point:

The state attorney's office said Dr. Steve Strumwasser's name was on the Viagra bottle, not Limbaugh's. Strumwasser, who is Limbaugh's psychiatrist, told authorities he "agreed to have his name on the label in an effort to avoid potentially embarrassing publicity for the suspect," according to a filing by the prosecutor's office.

"Thus, the medication contained in the subject pill bottle was legitimately prescribed to the suspect by his physician," the filing said.

It is generally not illegal under Florida law for a physician to prescribe medication in a third party's name if all parties are aware and the doctor documents it correctly, said Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney in Palm Beach County.

So it appears the majestic equality of the law has been stymied: Rush Limbaugh, millionaire rightwinger and supporter of Bushitler, will once again weasel through the cracks of our nation's porous legal system, this time using that most diabolical and contemptible legal loophole of all: actual innocence.

But don't think we'll ever let him forget it. After all, as they say in law school (I am reliably informed), there are some crimes so heinous that not even innocence is a defense.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 12, 2006, at the time of 1:42 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: cdquarles

Dafydd,

Welcome to the wonderful world of "controlled" substances and prescription drugs :). I don't blame Rush. He has to deal with perfidy daily. I do wonder how many other folks, of the non-celebrity variety, get this kind of try 'em in the Court of "Public" Opinion treatment when roughed up by Customs. I have been through Customs back in 1998. Those were the good ol' days :).

The above hissed in response by: cdquarles at July 12, 2006 10:25 PM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

Limbaugh himself put it rather well:
It was clearly an arranged attempted hit.
He made it clear that the particular agent who did the search was after him personally. The publicity and improper behavior by ICE was apparently well coordinated and pre-arranged.
We had a minor but instructive experience recently with TSA very recently that makes me thinnk that what was done to Limbaugh is a lot more common than any of us would like to believe - excpet of course the monkyboy;s of the world.
Limbaugh's response is that he is giong to avoid foreign travel over the next few years. So while once again the lefties are out whining about non-events like Plame or lying about the NSA or outing the SWIFT program in the name of liberty, their people are in reality stealing liberty from us at every opportunity. Limbaigh's no longer feeling free enough - in America - to travel freely.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at July 13, 2006 4:35 AM