Legal Commentary

Coffin nails, lies, and the junior senator from Illinois

By Beldar

So what else has Obama been lying to the American public about in addition to his lies about quitting smoking last year?

Why's he still being so evasive about the most recent time he "fell off the wagon"? Every successful ex-smoker I know can tell you to the day when he last had a cigarette; almost every liar about quitting smoking uses the sort of evasive language that Obama still is using.

Why does the press continue to let him get away with that? (cough*inthetank*cough*hacks*cough)

If he really quit last year with only occasional lapses (and those were really "months" ago) why is his "body man" still carrying "emergency Nicorette"? Why's he still still chewing it "regularly ... when not at campaign events"? Niorette's maker, GlaxoSmithKline, warns: "It is important to complete your Nicorette quit program at the end of 12 weeks, so stop using Nicorette at that time. If you still feel the need to use it, talk to your doctor." Obama said in November 2007 that he'd started using it "about nine months ago," causing the NYT to speculate even then that he'd replaced a cigarette addition with one to the gum!

"Real medicine in the form of a gum," says the Nicorette website; indeed, when first released, it required a prescription, and most drug-stores now keep even the over-the-counter version in locked cabinets.

So is Obama regularly misusing any other over-the-counter drugs?

And why's he released only a single page of medical records ? an undated letter based on his last examination, and that almost 17 months ago ? in marked contrast to the thousands of pages released by the grumpy old man who's running against him? Why's Obama refusing to make the doctor who wrote it, his internist since 1987, available for even a telephone interview?

(H/t: DRJ, in a comment to my April 4 post speculating that Obama was concealing a still-active cigarette habit notwithstanding having claimed to have quit.)

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).