Sidney Zion weighs in on the President's deplorable effort to limit access to the courts. Some great zingers:

"This war [on trial lawyers] is apparently Bush's top domestic priority. It's not the economy, stupid, it's the trial lawyers!"

****

"He [the president, while in Madison County, Illinois] paraded a few doctors who said they no longer could practice in Madison, as the verdicts had raised their malpractice insurance sky-high.

"Chances are these docs got the same vetting from the White House as Bernard Kerik, but so what? The cons and neocons of the American Tort Reform Association are the bunco artists of our time, and as such fly from facts as Dracula from the cross."

****

"Frivolous malpractice suits are rare. The reason? They cost too much to file. Trial lawyers finance these cases themselves, with contingent fees - which the tort reformers would abolish.

"The cap - and this is the real skinny - would leave young people and the elderly, those without economic damages because they have no incomes - without recourse to the courts. All they have is pain and suffering, and even without caps, it's difficult to get lawyers."

****

"Only 2% of patients injured by physician negligence sue. Which means these victimized doctors may be getting away with 98% of their malpractice."

I have been remiss in not blogging in opposition to the Administration's current tort limitation effort, as I had two years ago, when I first started this blog. I'll try to do a better job in the future.