Tilting at Windmills

...Legislators seek money for their vote by saying "Get involved," "Make a commitment," "I need some help on this," or perhaps in honor of their political science professor, "Participate in the process...

...The result was that the greatest financial scandal of recent times continued to roll merrily along for four more years...

...Listen, Buster, one more question like that and we'll throw you out of the Pentagon...

...Professor Ralph P. Santoro, who had taught at the Naval Academy for 25 years and rose to the chairmanship of the electrical engineering department, was recently dismissed for refusing to raise the grades of his students...

...Savor this one for a moment, roll it over gently in your mind, and consider if the Postal Service shouldn't, as the most basic part of operating its business, know the answer without having to ask Price Waterhouse...

...In malpractice cases, he has to learn enough about medicine to understand why things go wrong in the operating room and elsewhere in the practice of medicine...

...If medical licensing boards were dominated by laymen with enough trial lawyers among them to cross-examine the doctors accused of malpractice, there would be none of the selfprotective guild mentality that now lets the guilty escape...

...In my transition from the law to journalism, my greatest frustration with my new colleagues was that they were scared to cross-examine the experts...

...Milos Klvana until more than a year after he was jailed for extreme malpractice that ultimately led to his conviction for second-degree murder in the deaths of eight infants between 1982 and 1986...

...Then practically everyone could afford the clothing that was considered acceptable...

...He then walked approximately a hundred yards from the store, seized Jessica Short, the nineyearold, and proceeded to knife her to death...

...If they're lagging a bit in their defense of First Amendment rights, the tobacco companies certainly are busy trying to buy good will by associating themselves with good causes, which in turn creates a moral dilemma on the part of the good cause...

...A recent California case is typical of the way that these doctor-controlled boards operate...

...to deal with them...

...On the other hand, the District of Columbia school board, after a struggle, seems ready to accept grants from R.J...

...But then we learn from a recent Harvard study that there is much more malpractice than doctors are ever sued for...

...I'm delighted to report that Tony Kornheiser of The Washington Post has joined our campaign against expensive attire for kids...

...He was never shown standing alone, without an arm or a rostrum to hold onto...

...City commissioners in Lakeland, Florida, recently rejected a chewing tobacco company's offer to finance a softball tournament...

...This presumably was to reward them for contributing $597 million to the deficit in 1988 and for overspending their 1989 budget by $1.6 billion...

...As a result he was in a mental hospital from which, after the second attack, he escaped merely by strolling off the grounds...

...Philip Morris, if you're for free speech in peddling cigarette and alcohol, the least you can do is support free speech for those who disagree with you...

...Licenses could be revoked and the public protected without resort to costly court cases that inflate the insurance burden of good doctors...

...My objection to the Nikes and the designer jeans is that they are poisonous to the democratic spirit that ruled the public schools of my youth...

...Vst all know stories about doctors being forced out of medicine because of the high cost of malpractice insurance...

...At Scottsdale, $13,000 was spent on three pre-dinner drinking parties and $99 a person for just one dinner...

...I'm grateful to Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News's Sacramento Bureau for an introduction to the unique lexicon of the California legislature...

...At least he's against outlandish prices for sneakers such as Nike's Air Jordans that cost $125 and Reebok's The Pump shoes that go for $175...

...It arises from the congressional hearings on the nomination of an attorney, Timothy Ryan, to oversee the rescue of the Savings and Loans...

...In trying to make a point about how much tougher press coverage is today than it was a few decades ago, Nixon says: "Although I had always had a lively interest in public affairs, I was not aware until after his death that Franklin D. Roosevelt was crippled by polio...

...Baker, having been thus warned, did nothing...

...About that time, I requested our staff to prepare an analysis of the industry...

...Certainly it doesn't seem likely that the medical licensing boards will do much to control the sins of their peers...

...Why do the hangars have to be airconditioned...

...The reasoning that justifies this sort of thing is that it's permissible to take money from Satan himself if the money helps a good cause...

...Last month I wrote about how one possible future Democratic candidate for president, Bill Bradley, had been dead wrong on a crucial issue...

...and Maui, Hawaii...

...While the murders were going on the board ignored warnings of his incompetence from two hospitals and one of its own experts...

...Marina del Rey, California...

...This month it's the Republicans' turn...

...My old friend Jim Dent of the Charleston Gazette recently recalled the 1940s when mail was delivered twice a day and a stamp cost three cents...

...The possible candidate is the ambitious Secretary of State James Baker...

...He had previously committed two other stabbing attacks but, on each occasion, had also been found not guilty because of insanity...

...But I have a solution to this, which involves a kind word for my friends at the bar about whom I usually agree with Marlin Fitzwater: They deserve all the criticism they can get...

...He went directly to a sporting goods shop where he purchased a hunting knife...

...Are the foreign service's children really worth more than the military's...

...Reynolds and Philip Morris...

...When are we going to realize that violent criminals, whether sane or insane, must be put in maximum security prisons and held until it is clear they are no longer a threat to innocent people...

...The California board did not revoke the license of Dr...

...Military dependents on the other hand are educated at Department of Defense schools at a cost per pupil of $5,000...

...The occasion of his crucial error was a June 5, 1985 letter that Baker, who was then secretary of the treasury, received from William M. Isaac, who was then chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation...

...How idealistic are today's law students...

...S peaking of lying, did you happen to see the excerpts Time printed from Richard Nixon's forthcoming memoirs...

...I'm indebted to Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta for a recent column that reminded me of one of the irritating snobberies in the federal government...

...If you have shared my bewilderment at how the honor system at West Point and Annapolis could produce officers who habitually lie about their budgetary needs in the course of dealing with the other services, the OMB, and the Congress, you may be interested in one clue I have found to the mystery...

...And the American Ballet Theatre has accepted, without apparent struggle, Philip Morris's sponsorship of its annual tour and anniversary celebration...

...I don't know if Ryan is a good lawyer or not, but, if he is, he will know how to find out what he needs to know from the experts without being conned by them...

...Having seen Philip Morris's National Archives ad some 40 or 50 times, the one where the narrator gravely intones, "The freedom to say and think what we believe, to express our individuality and diversity, that's our birthright," I was astonished to learn that a Philip Morris subsidiary, the Miller Brewing Company, has sued a group of Texas doctors who ridiculed a Miller Lite promotion with t-shirts that said "Killer Lite Beer, We're Pushing a Drug...

...Although the press did not publish photographs of FDR in a wheelchair, practically everyone in America knew his legs had been paralyzed by polio, that he needed a specially equipped car to drive and that, because of his condition, swimming was the only form of exercise available to him...

...So when we hear of proposals for a no-fault approach to malpractice compensation that would lower the cost of insurance by eliminating lawsuits with their inflated claims for "pain and suffering," we say that sounds good, but we wonder how doctors will have any incentive to end malpractice if their guilt is not exposed through the same lawsuits that no-fault would eliminate...

...He was, in other words, fired for refusing to lie about what he thought were proper marks...

...Naples, Florida...

...This pattern of declining service and rising prices did not keep the Postal Service from awarding 75 division general managers bonuses averaging $5,564 in 1988 and $6,173 in 1989...

...American diplomats serving abroad receive an education allowance of $14,900 per child...

...Lobbyists with money to spend are called "Players" or "Big Boys...

...The moment to get suspicious is when he starts talking about the press release...

...Because there will be "extreme cockpit heat buildup" during the summer months that will lead to "premature aging and failure of avionic components...

...At least a hint is suggested by the fact that of the 474 who graduated from Harvard Law last year, only six entered public interest law...

...Last year, David R. Peterson killed a nine-year-old girl by stabbing her 34 times...

...It read: "When we got together a few months ago in your office, I told you that one of my principal concerns about the financial system was the condition of the thrift industry...

...Nixon is lying...

...If you're still wondering why journalists seem to be eager to be on television and why those television panel show members tend to lean to the right, Joe Cosby, who books journalist speakers for lucrative speaking engagements before business conventions, recently told Eric Alterman, a Washington writer, that the only requirements were that the journalist "be on television" and "be conservative...

...The charge against Ryan was that he is not an expert...

...He also wonders why virtually every major basketball coach in the country and many of the most outstanding athletes have lucrative contracts to promote shoes that a large number of kids can't buy without committing crimes...

...This permits their children to be educated at the best boarding schools...

...Because the plane's windows won't open...

...Of course, more than 90 percent of American newspapers and magazines accept tobacco advertising without protest by their publishers—or their reporters...

...But the average trial lawyer does become an expert on the sins of doctors...

...Related to this point is another kind word I want to say about lawyers...

...During 1989, while they were eliminating Sunday collections from thousands of mailboxes, postal officials spent more than $6 million on conferences for themselves at such places as Scottsdale, Arizona...

...Now that we're scheduled to pay 10 times that amount, Dent notes he can't even count on once-a-day delivery, especially after Monday holidays, when his carrier doesn't come around at all on Tuesday...

...A "hard vote" means one that the lobbyist knows will go his way only if he has made a financial contribution to the legislator whose support he is soliciting...

...In the midst of these glad tidings comes the news that the Postal Service has awarded Price Waterhouse a $23.4 million contract to measure how long it takes first-class mail to be delivered...

...It] concludes that the problem[s] of the thrift industry [are] such that they will soon overwhelm the ability of the Federal Savings and Loan Corp...

...But a lawyer's greatest strength is that he isn't buffaloed by the experts...

...Why the heat buildup...

...Charles Peters...

...So what's the real message about honor...

...He was found not guilty by reason of insanity...

...Why won't the windows open...

...They would quote experts on each side of a question but they were afraid to try to figure out who was right, so they couldn't guide their readers to the truth...

...Kornheiser has another objection: Even though the shoes cost more than a poor family can afford, "it takes no time at all to earn enough for sneakers by selling drugs...

...Since what was "in" was within everyone's reach, being rich couldn't make you a significantly more impressive dresser...

...I agree with that reasoning, but only as long as the good cause's association with Satan does not enable him to look like a good guy...