Last week, I blogged about a pro-tort reform editorial/article from Newsweek. This week, Newsweek has allowed a response, from a woman who had a double mastectomy because the doctors accidentally switched her biopsy slides. Her conclusion:

I also know that if all those who want to restrict the legal rights of ordinary citizens have their way, I wouldn't have waited seven months for an apology from the doctors, which I got only after my story became public. I would have waited forever.

I had a thought, in the category of what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If victims of negligence should be limited in their legal rights, why shouldn't doctors guilty of negligence be limited in their legal rights? I suspect doctors, or any other tortfeasors, would object mightily to such a limitation, which is why plaintiffs object just as vociferously.

I think I've finally smoked it: all this stuff from The Onion is...a joke! Well, except for the following:

NASHVILLE, TN—After more than 40 years of absorbing vast quantities of hard alcohol, George Jones' liver finally fled the famed country singer's body Tuesday. "I can't take it anymore," the liver said. "A liver can only process so many toxins before it says to hell with it." Jones' liver absorbed its final drink early Tuesday morning, a bourbon and branch water that Jones had with some eggs for breakfast. Until it can find a place of its own, Jones' liver plans to share an apartment with Merle Haggard's liver and Hank Williams Jr.'s lungs.

Or

CALCUTTA—More than 12,000 mourners were treated to a performance of "The Bitch Is Back" by Elton John at Mother Teresa's funeral Saturday. The delighted mourners, clapping their hands and swaying from side-to-side in time with the song's pounding, rollicking barrelhouse piano, joined John in singing the song's refrain, "Bitch, bitch / The bitch is back," dozens of times. "This is the perfect tribute to Mother Teresa," said Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor as leader of the Missionaries of Charity Order. "The bitch is indeed back with God."

This stuff has gotta be true.

Hee Hee. I guess we can blame this on Bush, too [Note: strong language in the post].

I've been too critical of doctors; they really do have it rough:

HOUSTON—Dr. Martin Kenneth Rinjipur, a neurosurgeon at Methodist Hospital, was heckled from the observation deck Monday after removing a cancerous tumor from a patient's occipital lobe. "You call that closing an incision?" the unidentified man shouted. "I could make a cleaner suture with 15 centimeters of frayed chromic gut and a pair of barbecue tongs. Go back to Johns Hopkins." Rinjipur did his best to act like he had not heard the comments.

Who was that masked man?

According to The Onion, Bill Clinton is (a) Googling, and (b) bored.

You think you've got problems? Fred Durst is REALLY in bad trouble!