Chief Justice Rehnquist's Drug Habit

[donsu]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2125906/


As we usher the 16th chief justice of the United States to his celestial reward, let us remember him in full. He labored successfully to return power to the states, treated colleagues with warmth and respect, was said to be a gregarious boss, and, inspired by a judge's costume he saw in the performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, added four silly gold stripes to each sleeve of his judicial robe.

And for the nine years between 1972 and the end of 1981, William Rehnquist consumed great quantities of the potent sedative-hypnotic Placidyl. So great was Rehnquist's Placidyl habit, dependency, or addiction—depending on how you regard long-term drug use—that by the last quarter of 1981 he began slurring his speech in public, became tongue-tied while pronouncing long words, and sometimes had trouble finishing his thoughts.

The parade of news stories and TV segments that followed Rehnquist's death made little mention of his affair with Placidyl. New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse offered more than any reporter, but still just 57 words near the end of a 6,100-word story. The Boston Globe made a two-sentence mention. The Washington Post story about his death ignored this chapter of his life, as did the Los Angeles Times.

(Slate can't brag on this score. David Plotz's 1998 "Assessment" and last week's Rehnquist retrospective-obituaries by Dahlia Lithwick, Walter Dellinger, and Richard W. Garnett avoided the topic.)

Obviously the lede of the chief's obituary should not have read, "William H. Rehnquist, a man with a jones for Placidyl, died yesterday. He also served as chief justice of the United States for 19 years." But the reluctance to explore this part of Rehnquist's life at any length illustrates a general rule of journalism: Most obituarists prefer the airbrush to the sharpened pen when it comes to the famous and powerful. In Rehnquist's case, reporters can't make the "I was on deadline" excuse. The chief justice gave generous advance notice of his impending death for months, and novella-length pieces like the Greenhouse obit were hardly banged out over Labor Day weekend.

-snip-

The Rehnquist story deserves a third airing today if only to illustrate the ugly double standards that excuse extreme drug use by the powerful, especially if their connection is a prescribing doctor, and condemns to draconian prison terms the guy who purchases his drugs on the street. Reviewing Rehnquist's tale one more time also demonstrates the reluctance of the Senate—and some members of the press—to grade the mental competency of judges and judicial nominees.
-snip-
-------------------------------------

Rehnquist the traitor

[barbaraann]

1. So that's how he was able to live with his enabling of fascism.

Thanks for the info. I had no idea.

[bribri16]

20. And remember all his ruling against drug users. Hypocrisy at its highest

But more then that. I remember the stories (never disputed to my knowledge) about his use of LSD and few other drugs. I believe that some of his peers testified to this during the nomination of his appointment to the SCOTUS. I have searched the net and it appears that there is noting there are it has been scurbbed but I bet some news print archives will have those stories. I think he was somewhat like the gay-bashing politicians who are themselves gay.

[barbaraann]

22. One standard for Republicans, one for everyone else.

And the worst part is that the corellary of the Double Standard is that people who benefit from it feel compelled to punish those who don't to assuage their guilt!

[fujiyama]

23. One interesting note though

I dislike him as one as anyone else here, but Rehnquist sided with the minority in Gonzales v. Raich, which ruled against medical marijuana usage.

[indepat]

25. Of the RW's prevalent sins of mendacity, duplicity, sanctimony,

reichousness, and hypocrisy, perhaps their greatest sin of all is hypocrisy.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Judges with LIFE TIME APPOINTMENTS ? WHY?

There should be a removal system in place for impaired and malfeasant judges

[JDPriestly]

4. There is a removal system -- impeachment.

Read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and you will understand why the Founding Fathers made it difficult to remove federal judges. State judges in many states, in contrast, must be elected after their original appointment. In many European and other civil law countries, judges have a different educational or training track than other lawyers. I'm not sure how it works, but they are professionals at being judges as opposed to merely being lawyers who rise in the ranks to the judiciary often due to their political ties.

[Mythsaje]

6. Now THAT makes sense...n/t

[Angry Girl]

13. Who says he was impaired?

Placidyl, booze, pot, church -- whatever your means to get you to an altered state of mind -- it doesn't necessarily make you incompetent on the job, you know!

Now, as to malfeasance, that's a different story. I hope that racist f*ck rots in hell for all eternity.

[opihimoimoi]

16. There is a collection of urine going on to piss on his freakin Grave

His Crime???: Selecting Bush for the Presidency by stopping the re count ...Despicable for which we all suffer:

How can those dudes SLEEP knowing Bush has fucked America the way he did...?

Do they not have a Concious?

[barbaraann]

3. Audie Murphy was also addicted to it.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001559/bio

[Pepperbelly]

5. Placidyls rock the casbah. nt

[BrklynLiberal]

7. He was far from an admirable human being..

A person does not deserve more respect in death than he earned in life.

Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist
Alan Dershowitz

<snip>
Let’s begin at the beginning. Rehnquist bragged about being first in his class at Stanford Law School. Today Stanford is a great law school with a diverse student body, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it discriminated against Jews and other minorities, both in the admission of students and in the selection of faculty. Justice Stephen Breyer recalled an earlier period of Stanford’s history: “When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations because he was Jewish, and those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews.” Rehnquist not only benefited in his class ranking from this discrimination; he was also part of that bigotry. When he was nominated to be an associate justice in 1971, I learned from several sources who had known him as a student that he had outraged Jewish classmates by goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering with brown-shirted friends in front of a dormitory that housed the school’s few Jewish students. He also was infamous for telling racist and anti-Semitic jokes.

As a law clerk, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum for Justice Jackson while the court was considering several school desegregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. Rehnquist’s memo, entitled “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases,” defended the separate-but-equal doctrine embodied in the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Rehnquist concluded the Plessy “was right and should be reaffirmed.” When questioned about the memos by the Senate Judiciary Committee in both 1971 and 1986, Rehnquist blamed his defense of segregation on the dead Justice, stating – under oath – that his memo was meant to reflect the views of Justice Jackson. But Justice Jackson voted in Brown, along with a unanimous Court, to strike down school segregation. According to historian Mark Tushnet, Justice Jackson’s longtime legal secretary called Rehnquist’s Senate testimony an attempt to “smear[] the reputation of a great justice.” Rehnquist later admitted to defending Plessy in arguments with fellow law clerks. He did not acknowledge that he committed perjury in front of the Judiciary Committee to get his job.

The young Rehnquist began his legal career as a Republican functionary by obstructing African-American and Hispanic voting at Phoenix polling locations (“Operation Eagle Eye”). As Richard Cohen of The Washington Post wrote, “e helped challenge the voting qualifications of Arizona blacks and Hispanics. He was entitled to do so. But even if he did not personally harass potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a brass-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to fellow citizens for trivial political reasons -- and who made his selection on the basis of race or ethnicity.” In a word, he started out his political career as a Republican thug.
<snip>

more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/telling-the-truth-about-c_b_6844.html

[tridim]

8. Placidyl : nudges your patient to sleep

Elvis was fond of Placidyl too.

[Laughing Mirror]

9. Chief Justice Major Druggie

Placidyls were (are?) kick-ass party drugs stronger than Quaaludes back in the day when Rehnquist was gobbling them down like candy. They were rubbery capsules with an oily elixir inside that burned your mouth and throat all the way down into your stomach if you happened to bite the tip off to get a taste of them going down. If the Chief Justice was doing 15 hundred milligrams a day, that means he was ingesting three of the brown-colored 500mgs or two of the powerful green 750-mg green spansules on a daily basis. He must have been three sheets to the wind on that bench, blown up on Placidyls, all those years.

The name Placidyl sounds gentle and nice, but don't let the ads fool you. Placidyl was a highly potent knock out hypnotic. I took them for awhile, and after a few weeks you start taking two at night, then three. Then one or two during the daytime. They were highly addictive. They would make you dopey and messy and a danger to yourself and to those around you. You'd fall around all over the place. Most doctors wouldn't prescribe them. It became very difficult to get prescription for them as the 1970s advanced and only disreputable doctors, such as the Washington, DC drug doctor I got them from, would write scrips for them. They were much more difficult to find than the ubiquitous Quaaludes always floating around. There were only a few pharmacies and drug stores or downtown apothecaries that would even fill prescriptions for Placidyls, and most did not even carry the 750 milligrams. The pharmacist who did have them would usually call the prescription in to verify with the doctor.

It seems the Chief Justice was able to get his hands on as many as he wanted.

It makes me wonder what kind of Dr. Feelgood drug doctor that Dr. Freeman H. Cary, the attending physician to Congress who prescribed them, was. It makes me wonder how many judges and lawmakers on Capitol Hill (and beyond) were hooked.

[populistdriven]

15. is Cary the Dark Emperor himself, controlling an addicted congress?

[Kurovski]

10. NOMINATED. It points out the hypocritical double-standard

on drugs in our nation.

I had no idea he was an addict. More should be aware of that fact.

[cally]

11. Roberts clerked for Rehnquist in 1980 and 1981 so their

friendship developed when Rehnquist was addicted. Did Roberts cover for the addiction during this time? I would ask about it during confirmation hearings.

[Bozita]

12. Yes, did Roberts cover for Rehnquist?

must be probed

[Laughing Mirror]

28. "Law Clerks Fill The Void"

from John Dean article from AirAmFAn's post 26 below.

Dean writes:

How do justices with mental health issues function? Law clerks and long-time secretaries can do a remarkable job of covering up for an ailing justice, keeping the office processing the constant flow of Court papers. ... Apparently so long as the paper keeps flowing, other justices do not complain. To the contrary, they will even hold decisions over from term to term, if necessary, to accommodate one of their brethren who is ailing.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20010720.html

Does Roberts qualify for Chief Justice because he was, in effect, Acting Chief Justice while Rehnquist was falling around, slurring his words, garbling his phrases, with total incapacity to do much of anything let alone judge?

[daninthemoon]

14. Well, as long as he wasn't smoking pot, everythings fine, right?

[novak goes postal]

17. more people need to see this... it explains a lot.

He was the worst Chief Justice ever..........

[Alpharetta]

19. Worst Chief Justice ever? the next one

I have no doubt the next Chief Justice will finalize the military-industrialization of our government and put democracy out of reach.

[onecent]

18. needs to be an AGE LIMIT for the old coots... n/t

[peacetalksforall]

21. Never heard of his addiction. Never heard of placydil. Ironically

however, Roberts appears to pretty placid. I'm sure he is straight and gets a good nights sleep without PRESCRIPTION addiction.

If true about Rehnquist - we can chalk up another hypocrite to the list of hypocritical right wing movers and shakers.

[Dr Fate]

24. That is a drug that ELVIS took a lot too.

n/t

[AirAmFan]

26. 2001 column on Rehnquist's drug impairment from John Dean, of Watergate fame:

From http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20010720.html

"Long before Associate Justice William Rehnquist was nominated to be chief justice, he had a serious health issue that may have impaired his decisionmaking. For nine years, from 1972-81, the Capitol physician, Freeman H. Cary, had prescribed a powerful hypnotic medication, Placidyl, because of Rehnquist's chronic lower back pain.

This powerful controlled substance is prescribed for relief from insomnia. Its known side effects include "confused thinking, impaired memory," and even "delirium." Rehnquist started at 500 milligrams a day, but the dose soon tripled, to 1500 milligrams a day....

By 1981, journalists covering the Supreme Court did notice that the highly articulate Rehnquist was having increasing difficulty asking questions from the bench. Reporters who engaged in private conversations with Rehnquist noted that he clearly had "significant difficulty talking." But none wrote about it.

It was not until Justice Rehnquist ended up in the hospital in January 1982, and it was learned that the Justice had been "seeing things and hearing things that other people didn't see or hear," did reporters say anything. Even when he was elevated to chief justice, Rehnquist's health records remained sealed during his confirmation hearings. More than this, the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed in advance not to ask him any questions about his health. He did testify about the cloak of secrecy regarding the health of justices, but not about his own condition."

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

27. I knew someone who took that stuff every day for years also, and

was encouraged to do so by her doctor. I suppose it was common practice at one time, just like amphetamines were regularly prescribed for weight loss very freely at one time.

I don't know the details of Rehnquist's use of the drug.

Maybe he was doctor shopping like old Rush, or getting them from someone else like his maid.

Update: I read the post on Dean's story about Rehnquist using placydil for back pain. The person I knew took it for sleep and it wasn't an increasing dosage, I don't think.

[rhett o rick]

29. There is a double standard for drugs like everything. The rich and powerfu

powerful can get away with anything. If you smoke maryjane you go to prison. But if you are rich enough for oxycontin (sp?) no problem. If you steal $25 from a 7-11, prison again, but corp exec's can steal Billions and buy Congresspeople. The rich have a strangle hold on this Country. They own everything. Use to be they needed the middle class for labor. No longer. They invest overseas, move their factories overseas. The insidious part it that they use middle class tax dollars to do it. They want to cut the trees in the National Forests. The middle class taxpayers own these forests. They are important to the health of the Country to maintain. But the rich and powerful want to cut them down for profit. The taxpayers will not only not see any of the profit, but will subsidize the logging, e.g. will pay for the roads. And of course the clean up. We need to take control back from the rich. Not sure how tho. Any suggestions? It seems all the candidates are owned by corporations one way or other.

[noonwitch]

30. He's dead, let it go

I'm not a huge fan of the man, but I don't really see the need to trash him now he's gone.

It's not like he's Ronald Reagan and is being portrayed as somehow more important and ethical as he was in reality.

[donsu]

31. like an Akita I'm not letting go - he was a traitor

nt

[AirAmFan]

32. 'Were the decisionmaking of one of your colleagues impaired by DRUG USE --

-- according to your own personal observation of the Justice's behavior on and off the bench -- WHAT would you do?

Would this stance on potential drug use by one of your colleagues inform your official USSC opininions regarding enforcement of laws against drug use by ordinary Americans?'

I'd like to see Ted Kennedy ask nominee Roberts questions like these, if only to set another couple of traps that might help keep the Court from toppling decisively to the Scalia side of things, or to help split the Republican fundie base away from its Wall Street wing on drug issues. Rehnquist's name need not be used, but some in the media would fill in the details for the average Fox News viewer (the National Enquirer?).