Saturday, March 20, 2010

Learn the facts before penning critical letter

The recent string of negative letters about Lower Keys Medical Center illustrates an unfortunate tendency among many citizens to blindly assume the worst about the hospital, its management and staff. In one notable example, Eric Detwiler's March 14 letter accuses LKMC staff of putting "direct pressure" on patients to use helicopter transport for non-emergency situations. He further declares that they do this for economic reasons.

Many readers unthinkingly accept that LKMC profits from inter-hospital transport. They imagine sinister executives stuffing dollars into their business suits with each unnecessary helicopter ride. Conspiracy theorists may be disappointed to learn, however, that LKMC has no economic incentive to choose one mode of transport over the other. The various helicopter services are operated by unaffiliated entities, and the hospital receives nothing.

To the extent LKMC facilitates these services, it does so as a public service. It is conceivable that medical personnel sometimes err on the side of caution in their preference for the "gold standard" of helicopter transport. Even though there are medical criteria for distinguishing between emergency and non-emergency situations, there is always some possibility of an adverse event along the way.

In a fair system, medical professionals could exercise judgment to honestly assess the patient's condition and act free of second-guessing. In the current system, however, there is always a lawyer eager to manufacture liability with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

Like Mr. Detwiler, many folks reflexively jump on the bandwagon, grab a horn and toot about profit-driven decision-making and corporate greed. But we should agree to a new rule that we acquaint ourselves with the facts before we write. Neither the hospital nor any of its employees receive payment for the transport of patients to other facilities, and yet they remain liable for events beyond their control during the ride. Let's be fair.

Lawrence E. Harkenrider

Key West

Citizens must accept Obama's illegitimacy

In response to Roger Kostmayer's response to my letter: The truth of law and history is that a natural born citizen, according to the manner in which this term was intended in the U.S. Constitution, and in four Supreme Court cases, is one who is born in the USA of two parents, each of which was a U.S. citizen at the time of the birth.

Obama, by the very public fact that he claims a British subject, as his father, was not, is not, and can never be a natural born citizen of the United States, even if he is a citizen thereof. This legal and historical fact makes his presidency invalid, all his presidential acts unlawful, and his entrance into the office unconstitutional and a usurpation.

Those four cases are: The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814); Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet. 242 242 (1830); Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875); and United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).

Obama is a British commonwealth citizen by a fact of history and law, which no one can dispute. His father was a citizen of Kenya, a colony of the British commonwealth at the time of Obama's birth. Britain confers perpetual citizenship status upon all who were born subjects; Obama remains a citizen of the United Kingdom whether he likes that or not. Unless he has made an act of renunciation before a British consular official in person, he remains a British citizen.

To define a term is to indicate the category or class of things which it signifies. The Supreme Court has never applied the term "natural born citizen" to any other category than "those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof."

Hence every U.S. citizen must accept this definition or categorical designation, and fulfill his constitutional duties accordingly. No member of Congress, no judge of the federal judiciary, no elected or appointed official in federal or state government has the right to use any other definition; and if he does, he is acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally.

C.B. Alyn

Key West