I have long been amazed by the rate of hospital injuries from preventable bloodstream infections. While there have been a few lawsuits, hospitals appear to have avoided liability for these preventable illnesses. Now, a study in the American Journal of Medical Quality suggests that the situation may be worse than anticipated. Not only is that not a strong litigation deterrent (my view), but this study says that hospitals are actually making a killing by making patients sick. Researchers found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient. Here is the most amazing fact: hospitals earn nearly nine times more for treating infected patients.
We have all had it happen. You are sitting in a restaurant or walking on the street when you accidentally hit your phone and dial an unintended call. A friend or relative then has to sit and listen to you discussing an order or chatting with a taxi driver. Scott Simon, 24, however, may have the worst butt call story of all. Pompano Beach police say that his phone dialed 911 as he was discussing his plan to kill a man. The police tracked him down just minutes after the man was killed. Presumably, this was a Nokia just fulfilling its promise of “connecting people.”
We have previously discussed the continued prosecution of minors for engaging in sexual conduct under state laws. These laws have a sexist record of boys prosecuted for having sex with a minor where girls were treated as the victim, even when the sex was consensual and both were minors or close in age. There is a new case out of Indian River, Florida that is equally troubling. Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, is a senior in high school and is facing felony charges for engaging in a sexual relationship with another girl at her school. Despite an outcry against prosecuting Hunt for consensual sex, the prosecutor has refused to drop the charges of two counts of lewd and lascivious battery of a child 12 to 16 years of age. Assistant State Attorney Brian Workman has insisted that he will only agree to a plea deal where she would accept one felony conviction and a two-year sentence of home confinement. Such a plea would likely put Hunt on the sex offender registry for life.
This week we lost Zach Sobiech, who left the world much poorer with his passing. However, he left us a wonderful gift. The Minnesota teen wrote a wonderful song called “Clouds” after learning he had terminal bone cancer. He sang of his hope that “maybe someday I’ll see you again . . . We’ll fly up in the clouds and we’ll never see the end.” The physical end came for Zach this week but his grace and his gift has lifted the hearts of millions.
We have yet another case of police being accused of beating a citizen for filming them in public. Makia Smith says that Baltimore police beat her up and smashed her camera when they filmed them beating a man in the street. She is now suing the Baltimore Police Department, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts and police Officers Nathan Church, William Pilkerton, Jr., Nathan Ulmer and Kenneth Campbell in Federal Court.
This video appeared last week and shows the extremism of the “Golden Dawn” movement in Greece, which is now reaching out to other European countries. As with Nazism in Germany, the movement has emerged from the economic chaos of Greece to offer hate and violence as a way to express the frustration of the people facing high unemployment and stagnant economic prospects. In the video, you can hear a Golden Dawn member repeatedly screaming “Heil Hitler” in the Greek parliament.
I have previously testified and written about President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments, which I viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional. Recently, the D.C. Circuit agreed with that view and found that the Obama Administration had violated the recess appointment powers. Now a second appellate court has joined that view, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I have two law review articles coming out on these appointments and more broadly the abuse of recess appointment powers in modern presidencies. See Jonathan Turley, Recess Appointments in the Age of Regulation, 93 Boston University Law Review ___ (2013) and Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Adverse Possession: Recess Appointments and the Role of Historical Practice in Constitutional Interpretation, 2103 Wisconsin Law Review ___ (2013)
We have been discussing the tax policies of President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government — a record that I have criticized as ruinous from an economic standpoint. A recent report indicates that for some high-earning families — more than 8,000 — the Hollande policies impose a 100% tax. It is the ultimate “eat the rich” policy. Even for those families facing a 75% rate, it is unclear why they would continue to work in the country. Many are not. France is experiencing a flight of both high earners and companies.
“Be what you would seem to be-or, if you’d like it put more simply-Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
The late Paul Weyrich is generally regarded as the principal architect of the new conservative coalition that emerged with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan. He was a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation. He even created the phrase “moral majority” for Pat Robertson. But his most important creation was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 1973. In the course of 30 years that body has become the most powerful force in state legislative bodies throughout the country.
Weyrich was not a fan of voting rights. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” he said in 1980. “Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Weyrich understood that voters are problematic for two reasons. First, they are fickle and unpredictable. Second, they cannot be held accountable for their decisions. In short, they cannot be controlled, making democracy an uncertain endeavor.
But Weyrich also understood that lobbying is not an effective antidote to an independent electorate. It is expensive and subject to restrictions and regulations that vary from state to state. ALEC operates in a manner that enables it to surmount those problems. Powerful corporate interests provide the funding necessary to research and draft model bills serving their interests. The approximately 2,000 state legislator members of ALEC sponsor those model bills in their respective states. And the electorate? Well, anyone is free to join and have his or her voice heard by paying an annual membership fee ranging from $7,000.00 to $25,000.00.
That free speech is under attack by the governments local and Federal should be manifestly apparent from the stories that have appeared of the last few years here at Res Ipsa Loquitur. In articles from our host, myself and my fellow guest bloggers, we’ve seen open attacks on free speech as a right proper, attacks on anonymous political free speech, the prosecution and persecution of whistleblowers and the erosion of shield laws protecting reporters and attacks on free speech and pluralism in general in the form of blasphemy laws just to name a few of the threats that have come to our attention. What is most troubling is that the Federal government has stepped up their efforts to outright infringe upon the free speech rights of citizens and the press and chill the right however possible. Free speech is critical for the function of democracy. Without dissent, there can be no debate, only the dictates of the strong over the weak which is by definition tyranny. That is one of the reasons that it was so important that the Founders protected it in the 1st Amendment. However, they felt in particular that the freedom of the press was a not just free speech, but a very special kind of free speech that merited both special mention and protection in the 1st. The 1st Amendment reads in relevant part:
Congress shall make no law [. . .] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”.
As we know, there are legitimate reasonable restrictions on free speech such as defamation, incitement and threats (particularly threats of violence). So before we look at the two present instances of the chilling of free speech – one a local story about a graduation and one the national story concerning the DOJ accessing the phone records for hundreds of reporters working for the Associated Press – let us first ask examine what is meant by the term “chilling free speech”.
Bring me a plate of whatever and something wet to drink!
A friend of mine sent me this picture. I know that apathy is a problem for a great number of our fellow citizens, but come on. Sure, it’s silly, but do you think this is clever? Is it indicative of a larger problem with the American mindset? Both? Or do you just not care?
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe), guest blogger
Dr. Isaac Ray
The relationship between mental health and the legal system is a turbulent one at best. One major problem is they speak two different languages. For example, insanity is a legal term found nowhere in any psychiatric or psychological diagnostic manual.
There are several key words used commonly by both professions, but which have quite different meanings. The words “validity” and “reliability” are part of the vocabulary of science. To a scientist, the word validity means that a test measures what it claims to measure. When a test is intended to measure depression or anxiety, the user can assume it measures depression and anxiety.
Reliability refers to the repeatability of a test or measurement. If we give the same test to the same subject several times, all the scores will fall within the standard error of measurement 95% of the time.
When an attorney uses the word validity, it means, Binding; possessing legal force or strength; legally sufficient.
The legal interpretation of the word reliability suggests the subject matter is trustworthy, and that one can rely on it. However, when a scientist says something is reliable, it means whatever is being tested will get the same results with every retest, within the Standard Error of Measurement.
An examination of the literature of both professions reminds us of the quip attributed to George Bernard Shaw, “[We] are two peoples divided by a common language.”
When I was in graduate school, a well-known attorney gave an invited lecture to the student body. The speaker made several sweeping generalizations about the mentally ill; all of them displaying a stunning ignorance of facts. Then he turned his venom on those in the mental health professions, referring to mental health professionals scornfully as, “Soul doctors.” I would like to say people like him are rare, but they are not. I have known judges who, quite literally, did not believe in mental illness. We had one of those in our area who, mercifully, retired a few years ago. People like that remind me of those misogynistic knuckle-draggers who don’t believe there is such a thing as rape.
Now, back to the stormy relationship between the legal system and mental illness.
The City of Detroit has left whole areas without street lighting and even proposed allowing buildings to burn rather than spend the money on fire fighters. The mayor has called it quits and even an emergency manager appears close to throwing in the towel on the city. However, Detroit’s two public pension funds (long accused of gross mismanagement) are sending four trustees to Hawaii at the cost of $22,000 as an educational trip.
There is an interesting lawsuit against an academic institution in Colorado. Spanish-speaking custodial workers at the Auraria Higher Education Center in Colorado are suing over the failure of the Center to give them instructions in Spanish — alleging that they have faced unsafe conditions over the use of English rather than Spanish. The case suggests that the use of Spanish can not only be legally required but that the use of English can constitute a type of unsafe workplace.
One of the longest (and unresolved) complaints with Disney is that families pay an obscene amount to get into “The Happiest Place on Earth” only to face ridiculously long lines that severely limit the number of rides that they can enjoy. Disney actually makes money off the inconvenience by selling “guides” and offering fast passes. However, it is not the only one making money off its lines. New York City moms are reportedly hiring disabled people to pose as family members so that their kids can go to the front of lines. The cost: $1000 a day for your own personal line-cutting wheelchaired person.
I have long been amazed by the rate of hospital injuries from preventable bloodstream infections. While there have been a few lawsuits, hospitals appear to have avoided liability for these preventable illnesses. Now, a study in the American Journal of Medical Quality suggests that the situation may be worse than anticipated. Not only is that not a strong litigation deterrent (my view), but this study says that hospitals are actually making a killing by making patients sick. Researchers found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient. Here is the most amazing fact: hospitals earn nearly nine times more for treating infected patients.
