Nat Hentoff, not your garden-variety right-winger by any means, says that — for the first time — he’s scared of a presidential administration. He also, unlike most clueless or disingenuous mainstream media commentators, is able to see behind the verbal fog of legislative language and find the dangers of Sarah Palin’s “death panels.” Note that he never uses the phrase, but it’s clear that his “boards” are synonymous with her “death panels”:
I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama’s desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It’s already in the stimulus bill signed into law.
