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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe hooked on Placidyl Reagan appointed Chief Justice who gave George W Bush the Presidency
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http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/FBI_details_chief_justice%27s_prescription_drug_trouble<snip>
FBI details chief justice's prescription drug trouble
Friday, January 5, 2007
Former U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist suffered paranoid delusions in 1981 during withdrawal from a dependence on prescription painkillers, according to his recently-released FBI file.
The late head of the U.S.'s top court began taking the drug Placidyl in the early 1970s for insomnia and back pain while he was an associate Supreme Court justice. His dependence on the drug was first made public when he was hospitalized for symptoms related to it in 1981, but the delusions were only revealed in the release of the file this week.
William Rehnquist takes the oath to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 after a confirmation hearing during which he was investigated by the FBI.
A doctor who treated Rehnquist told an FBI investigator the justice had "bizarre ideas and outrageous thoughts. He imagined, for example, that there was a CIA plot against him." Another doctor said Rehnquist "had also gone to the lobby in his pajamas in order to try to escape."
Rehnquist had been taking nearly three times the recommended maximum daily dosage of the drug. His delusions came when doctors at George Washington University Hospital took him off it. Eventually, they put him back on Placidyl and weaned him off slowly until he was cured of his dependence.
The FBI conducted an extensive investigation into Rehnquist's drug dependence at the request of the Senate Judiciary Committee during his 1986 confirmation hearings to become chief justice.
The FBI was also asked to investigate Democrats who were set to testify against Rehnquist at the 1986 hearing, the file showed. The Democrats were set to testify Rehnquist intimidated minority voters in the early 1960s as a Republican Party official in Arizona.
It's not clear if the bureau ever did investigate the Democrats, however a memo in the file shows then-Assistant Attorney General John Bolton, the most-recent United Nations Ambassador for the U.S., approved the investigation and said he would "accept responsibility should concerns be raised about the role of the FBI."
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Ninga
(8,275 posts)all illusions and innocent and noble idealism that this county was a shinning example of liberty and justice for all....but sadly came to believe that this country called America was like a whore....all purty on the outside, stinky and diseased on the inside.
libodem
(19,288 posts)But I thought Placidyl was an antipsychotic or major tranquilizer? It would make you sleep but it is not a sleeper. Poor goof was likely very mentally ill. Conservativitism will do that. It's mostly mean spirited and hateful ideology.
UTUSN
(70,695 posts)"The Democrats were set to testify Rehnquist intimidated minority voters in the early 1960s as a Republican Party official in Arizona."
JHB
(37,160 posts)The photo in the article you quote mentions he was appointed Chief Justice in 1986, and happens to show the guy who was president at the time (on the right, appropriately):
William Rehnquist takes the oath to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 after a confirmation hearing during which he was investigated by the FBI.
my bad
JHB
(37,160 posts)The job of leading that panel had been held by senior Appeals Court Judge George MacKinnon, an old-time Republican who had selected and supported Walsh. But after Walsh broke through the Iran-Contra cover-up in 1991 and brought obstruction-of-justice cases against former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and several senior CIA officials, Rehnquist acted.
***
Rehnquist made this change despite language in the 1978 Ethics in Government Act aimed at preventing partisanship by stipulating that in picking members of the three-judge panel priority shall be given to senior circuit judges and retired judges.
That provision had always been followed until 1992 when Rehnquist brushed aside the language and reached down for an active junior judge, Sentelle. Beyond Sentelles lack of senior status, he was known as one of the most conservative partisans on the federal bench. A protégé of North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms and a former Reagan convention delegate, Sentelle had even named his daughter, Reagan, after his political idol. Sentelle also continued denouncing liberals after his appointment to the federal bench. In one article published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy in winter 1991, Sentelle accused leftist heretics of wishing to turn the United States into a collectivist, egalitarian, materialistic, race-conscious, hyper-secular, and socially permissive state.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/090705.html
malaise
(268,998 posts)very informative
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)It would automatically render unqualified half the crazies unwilling to take a piss test.