http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/8/152532/8722/680/564782
Former Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards admitted today that he did have an affair with the woman the National Enquirer reporters caught him with.
I guess, above all, I'm just disappointed. I didn't want it to be true. I thought he was above that.
You can say what you want-lots of people have affairs, including (ahem!) John McCain (ahem!), and its only a personal failing, and it's only.....blah blah blah.
It's wrong. It's none of our business, but it's wrong. He shouldn't have done it. I think less of him today than I did yesterday. Ever since 2004, seeing him on the convention stage with his boy, I really expected him to be different.
Hey, I'm a guy. I know acutely the temptations. (Well, not really. Nobody's made me an offer.) But every married man knows the feeling of longing.
You just don't do it, though. You don't.
Sigh.
It is not surprising, given his inexcusable conduct as an attorney.
ReplyDeleteThat is a complete non sequitur.
ReplyDeleteWhat does one have to do with the other?
Or are you just mad because he's rich and not Republican?
Not really a non-sequitur. He lied like crazy to get rich on frivolous lawsuits. How else can anyone make a claim in court that an obstrician is guilty of causing a child to have genetic defects at the time of birth? Check into these terms before you defend this or say it is OK.
ReplyDelete"Or are you just mad because he's rich and not Republican?"
Why would that make me mad? I'm not mad at Obama, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, or most of the other rich Democrats who ran this time. I may disagree with some of the policies of some of them, but at least they didn't get rich through abusing the court system. Generally honest guys as far as politicians go.
Someone being rich does not make me mad, just like not being a Republican does not make me mad. But I sure hope that the $400 to pay for the haircut comes from an honest living. Edwards did not make one.
Edwards showed a complete lack of honesty and ethics as an attorney, and this shameful incident... punishing his wife this way for being ill with cancer... fits in with his character.
Well, I did look it up. And you know what? If you look beyond World Net Daily, as usual, the picture gets more complicated.
ReplyDeleteYes, the consensus is clear, in 2008, that is virtually impossible for a doctor to cause cerebral palsy. This was less clear in the 1980s, when Edwards began practicing. It was becoming clearer in the mid 1990s, when he stopped practicing law to run for office. That's the way science works. You can't apply 2008 science to 1988 and say that Edwards was lying. In retrospect, he was wrong, but he wasn't lying. He was using experts, just like the insurance companies were. They gave evidence, and the jury decided.
I don't see anything immoral about that.
So, Edwards damaged careers of doctors who did nothing wrong based on the generalities of experts? We know tha attorneys can choose contradicting experts to support anything they want.
ReplyDeleteSo Edwards really had no evidence these doctors did anything wrong, and yet he used his "lie in the courtroom to get rich" strategy to recruit experts to support a phony case and destroy the careers of doctors who did nothing wrong.
The choice of experts is always driven by the legal team.
Nothing immoral there at all.
Of course he had evidence. He had the state of the science at the time, and he had experts, reflecting the nature of the science at the time, who said that the doctors were negligent.
ReplyDeleteThose experts, and that science, looking back at it from 2008, were wrong.
That doesn't mean, in 1988, or in 1992, that he was LYING. According to the state of science at that time, he wasn't.
He was just making truth-free proclamations, not lying.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, AT THAT TIME, they were not lies. He can't be held responsible for conclusions that were reached after he stopped practicing law.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a doctor, but even in the short time I have been in the medical profession (since 1994), practices that were absolutely forbidden (giving beta blockers to patients with heart failure) have become standard operating procedure. Were my professors lying when they told me this was a bad idea in 1994?
Obviously not. They were reflecting the best available knowledge in 1994. Looking back on it from 2008, they were wrong. But not lying.
The Edwards situation is cloudier. In the mid 1990s, there were some figures and studies arguing that CP was entirely genetic. Some were not, arguing that more information was needed or that some, not all cases were clearly due to negligence.
Edwards was representing his client zealously, which was his obligation. If he were to make the same argument in a 2008 case, he would probably be laughed out of court. Of course, he would be lying, again, if he said this in 2008.
But doing his job in 1992 or 1994, he had to argue what he argued.
I still don't have a problem with him doing that.
"Edwards was representing his client zealously"
ReplyDeleteTrial lawyers typically do that, even if it means lying, or doing everything they can so their client will prevail even though the client is in the wrong. This is what happened with the defense in the nefarious O.J. and McDonalds coffee cases.
It might be his "obligation" as an attorney, but it shows him as someone who will lie to get rich. The CP was supposedly caused by doctors acting incorrectly and negligently. Using these "Experts", Edwards willingly created a false case without any evidence of actual malpractice on the doctors. But it was his job to lie and destroy the careers of the doctors on behalf of his clients.
"Were my professors lying when they told me this was a bad idea in 1994?"
There is kind of a difference between discussing standards of medical practice, and discussing instances of an unethical individual abusing the court system in order to get rich.
I have a problem with any attorney using such dubious methods to destroy careers. Thanks to Edwards and similar trial attorneys who do their "obligations" by doing all they can to win frivolous lawsuits, malpractice insurance for obsetricians is sky high, and there is a shortage of obestricians. See this report. It is not from Frontpage or Free Republic, but from a left-wing university.
I would be interested to find out if Edwards apologized to any of the people he has wronged in winning frivolous lawsuits, or returned any of the ill-gotten riches.
I have something a litle more personal to add on this, but only in email.
I agree that malpractice in particular, and health care in general, is screwed up six ways from Sunday.
ReplyDeleteFor John Edwards to have lied, at the time he argued those cases, there had to be an overwhelmingly clear medical consensus that there was absolutely no way CP could be caused by malpractice. That was not the case.
Therefore, how could he be lying?
There WAS expert testimony, in those cases, that the expert, at that time, thought that the doctor acted improperly. That's not a lie, that's the state of medical knowledge at the time.