Old stories...

The two images that haunt my mind today, Bush, are from yesterday's New York Times: Edgar Ray Killen, an old, frail, balding, wispy-haired, pathetic wreck of a Southern Baptist preacher standing before Judge Marcus Gordon of the Circuit Court of Philadelphia, Mississippi; and the 1964 mug shot of the same Edgar Ray Killen, grim-faced, defiant, cruel, contemptuous, at the time of the murders of those three young civil rights workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, whose crime was to participate in the registration of black voters in the state of Mississippi.

So do we now look at this pathetic old man and have pity on his decrepitude? I say no. We cannot, as a society, compound our shameful inaction of forty years ago with shameful inaction today. The man has never, as I understand it, expressed a moment's remorse for that dreadful episode. He has continued to preach hatred and racial prejudice as the explicit intention of his unmerciful God. His contempt for the justice system, back at the time of the crime, should be matched by our respect for the justice system today. Let him stand trial and, if found guilty, let him spend the rest of his days in jail. I like to think that I'm not a vindictive man, but justice, in this instance, should no longer be delayed.

Anyway, Bush, I wish you'd had it in your heart yesterday to say just one or two words in public, in all gravity, as our nation's leader, about this significant moment in the country's history. I understand that it's inappropriate to comment on a case that's going to trial, but maybe some words about a still open national wound, a stain on this country's honor and reputation, an opportunity for healing… Something.

Instead of which you go ranting on to your hand-picked audience about the need to place a damages cap of $250,000 on medical malpractice suits--in order, I can only assume, to protect those good people in the insurance business. Imagine, though, Bush, were you an average middle class American and your daughter, God forbid, had been condemned to life in a wheelchair--or on life-support--through the sheer negligence of some doctor or hospital, how would a quarter million dollars see your family through a lifetime of her dependency and medical costs? Impossible, no? There has to be a better answer than simply slapping an arbitrary cap on every case, no matter what the circumstance.

You do have a way of finding those issues that can be sold to a public eager to find easy targets to blame for their misfortunes. In this case, it's trial attorneys. And then coming up with simple-sounding answers that can be counted on to rally the mob. The end result, though, as you play to the gallery on relatively minor matters, is that we sink deeper into the mire of incompetence and neglect in the face of such truly pressing issues as health care for those millions of Americans who simply can't afford it.