First Do Harm

Your government hard at work to keep you from being safe, I'm working on the poster. A picture of a vaccine needle will be the illustration.

We've seen a lot the safety inspections that didn't bark in the night leaving trails of bodies, now we have the FDA seeking to preempt suits that try to penalize irresponsible uses of drugs that do harm. The implications extend beyond threat from irresponsible pharmaceutical effects.

They took down that Hermes staff in your medical professions' symbol at FDA, leaving the snakes.

The Bush administration has embraced preemption largely because it allows the White House to use its regulatory power to achieve what big businesses haven't been able to do through legislation, which is immunize themselves from lawsuits over defective products. In recent years, federal agencies, dominated by industry insiders, have written preemption language into safety regulations, from rules issued by the Consumer Products Safety Commission governing mattress flammability to those introduced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on seat-belt placement and automobile-roof strength. In fact, while the NHTSA was run by a former lawyer for DaimlerChrysler, it issued a roof-strength regulation that was so weak the only possible explanation for its issuance was that it was designed to help auto manufacturers head off lawsuits. Even the EPA has gotten into the act, once filing a brief on behalf of Dow chemical supporting its preemption defense in a case before the Supreme Court in 2005.

But no federal agency has pursued a preemption agenda as aggressively as the FDA did when Troy worked there. In 2003, he appeared at a conference of defense lawyers and in-house legal counsels from drug companies and publicly invited them to contact his office if they had a case the FDA could help them out with. "We can't afford to get involved in every case," he said, according to an affidavit written by someone who was there. "We have to pick our shots…so make it sound like a Hollywood pitch."
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The "preemption preamble," as it's known, states that this rule preempts all state tort lawsuits against manufacturers who make drugs approved by the FDA. The regulation allows drug companies to invoke the FDA's approval to beat back lawsuits without actually having to get the agency to enter the case. This is a hedge against future Democratic presidents who might want to institute a change of course. The preamble was inserted into the regulation without any public input. Since then, lawyers have repeatedly invoked it when defending companies against personal-injury lawsuits.
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If the Supreme Court follows Troy's lead, it won't just be pharmaceutical and medical-device lawsuits that are affected. A ruling for the drug company in Levine could also limit lawsuits over everything from toxic chemical exposure to tainted beef—a pretty grim scenario for the average consumer. And there’s reason to believe the court will do just that.

The ongoing damage the worst administration in history has accomplished is deep and far-reaching, enabling the forces against the American people as no war ever has.

The remark that was made just in passing in a White House de-briefing yesterday by Ms. Perino, that the economic damage done to this country was the result of the Dems having "been asleep for seven years" just blows me away. It's the second evocation of that theme that the Dems are responsible for the war because they failed to realize all the information they were fed was lies, and didn't stop the war criminals before they could kill again.

It will take penalties to make these depredations stop paying off. The Hague is ever more called for by the war against America waged by this cabal.