Oyez, Oyez

I suppose there are things to rant about after all. CNN is reporting that Chief Justice William Rehnquist was hopped up on pain-killers for most of the 1970s while he as an associate Supreme Court Justice. Apparently the FBI had an extensive file on the erstwhile Chief and assisted the Nixon and Reagan administration in ensuring no damaging facts would come out which would sink his candidacy at Senate hearings in 1970 and 1986 when he was promoted to the Chief Justice position.
The documents show that the FBI was aware in 1971 that Rehnquist had owned a home in Phoenix with a deed that allowed him to sell only to whites. The restrictive covenant was not disclosed until his 1986 confirmation hearings, at which Rehnquist said he became aware of the clause only days earlier. Apparently he lied to Congress in the hearings.

“Also detailed in the declassified file was Rehnquist's 1981 hospital stay for treatment of back pain and his dependence on powerful prescription pain-relief medication. The FBI investigated his dependence on Placidyl, which Rehnquist had taken for at least 10 years, according to a summary of a 1970 medical examination. When Rehnquist checked into a hospital in 1981 for a weeklong stay, doctors stopped administering the drug, causing what a hospital spokesman at the time said was a "disturbance in mental clarity."

The FBI file, citing one of his physicians, said Rehnquist experienced withdrawal symptoms that included trying to escape the facility and discerning changes in the patterns on the hospital curtains. The justice also thought he heard voices outside his room discussing various plots against him. The doctor said Placidyl is a highly toxic drug and that she could not understand why anyone would prescribe it, especially for long periods.

In one previously secret memo from 1971, an FBI official wrote, "No persons interviewed during our current or 1969 investigation furnished information bearing adversely on Rehnquist's morals or professional integrity; however ..." The next third of the page is blacked out, under the disclosure law's exception for matters of national security.

"It would be nice to know what is still classified, three decades later," Charns said”

Wow. Mr. War on Drugs was flying high as a kite for a decade while his conservative clerks from Harvard wrote opinions that upheld long jail sentences for drug offenses. Then he lied to Congress about living in a community of racists to get confirmed to the highest judicial office in the land. God knows what other perversities he engaged in which are still classified. I wish I could have been in the hospital room listing to him rant about the psychedelic patterns on the drapes. Hilarious.