You Think I Don't Know What I've Gained?

In what can only be called a nightmare of verb tenses, Reuters is reporting that a US Appeals Court has ruled that lower US courts had wrongly blocked the government access to confidential Major League drug tests. The San Francisco Chronical is slightly more specific in citing the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals as the brain child behind this catastrophe of privacy rights.

Of course I feel it is a complete invasion of privacy. Not that the drug tests proper are independently private, however, the risk is that the tests would also reveal protected health information that even minors are entitled to keep private. Of couse I'm sure the golden children of jurisprudential inteligentia that is the 9th Circuit undertook this subtle analysis, and after carefully weighing the prejudicial impact against the government's interest in prosecuting the War on Tar determined that an individual's right to privacy is dwarfed by the government's interest in something far more ephemeral and make believe.

All in all I think this is a strange break from the disquieting trend of the judiciary playing merely a perfuntory role in government. A trend that has proceded unabated since 7/11. I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation for this recent bout of judicial muscle flexing. What it is one can only speculate.

Provided the information is only used to prosecute drug distributors, (which the government assures everyone who could care less it is) then I feel a little better about it. Notwithstanding the fact that this should substantially lessen the government's right to health information from what they themselves admit are third parties. Again, I'm sure the 9th Circuit was all over that nuance.

After all, it's hard to imagine that someone who doesn't know what preemptive means could possibly be aware of what "knowingly" means. However, I'm still not happy about it. On the simple grounds of who the fuck cares?

On the bright side this could mean that the government may soon start investigating whether the Congress as a whole is engaged in a widespread stupid pill conspiracy. But just as with monkeys and typerwriters and Sheakespeare, it remains probably, however unlikely, that even the likes of Dubya Bush is capable of a coherent thought. I mean the mere existence of monkeys and Shakespeare establishes it as a cosmic possibility in that Shakespeare is no more cosmically unlikely than the existence of monkeys. It was all predetermined 50 billion years ago. There was always going to be Shakespeare and monkeys and the 9th Circuit so why get all in a state. It all makes sense in a way unless you're one of the sad fo-tards profiled on Anderson Cooper's vacant CNN propaganda spectacle last night.

If you missed it you're a far better person for it.