Anger Is an Energy

|

Wait, did someone just say "willingness to use the power of his office to ruin the lives of those who dare to cross him" in regards to a Republican presidential contender? Well, here's a blasto from el pasto that I found too late to make into the "Anger Management" chapter of my libro:

In their effort to discredit a retired Air Force sergeant who had made apparently false accusations against John G. Tower, Pentagon officials and a Republican Senator revealed a selective and perhaps misleading version of his mental health records, according to material made public today.

Experts in privacy law said in interviews today that any release of military medical records was a violation of the sergeant's rights.

A letter from a top Air Force official read in public Thursday by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, gave partial quotations from the sergeant's medical reports indicating that he was psychologically unstable. […]

Senator McCain, an Arizona Republican and a retired Navy captain, said in an interview today: "I'm sorry I had to do it, but weighed in the balance of assassination of a man's character, it was the lesser of two evils." […]

In an interview, Ronald L. Plesser, a Washington lawyer who is considered the nation's foremost authority on the laws of privacy, said the release of the medical records was "a clear violation of the spirit of the Privacy Act."

Only under extraordinary circumstances, said Mr. Plesser and other experts, can medical records be made public without the consent of the serviceman involved.