Really now

The FBI released a portion of its file on the late former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist. There were a couple of bombshells. For starters, the man had ten year addiction to painkillers stemming from back problems in the early Seventies. When he finally got off the pills in 1981, he suffered delusions, hallucinations and even what must be called a psychotic episode.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI's file on former Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- made public more than a year after his death -- offers insight into hallucinations and other symptoms of withdrawal that Rehnquist suffered when he was taken off a prescription painkiller in 1981.

A doctor was cited as saying that Rehnquist, an associate justice of the Supreme Court at the time, tried to escape the hospital in his pajamas and imagined that the CIA was plotting against him.

Funny thing that this didn’t come out during his confirmation hearings, don’t you think? Seriously, people freaked out about Ruth Ginsburg because she is a liberal and a woman. But a sitting Justice has a paranoid fantasy about being targeted by the CIA and no one has a problem elevating him to Chief five years later? No? Well OK then.

Also of note, it appears that the FBI was used to investigation witnesses against Rehnquist during his confirmation hearings.

Fifteen years later, during the Reagan administration, the FBI was enlisted to conduct background checks on witnesses who were scheduled to testify against Rehnquist's nomination to become chief justice.

The late Sen. Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 when Rehnquist was nominated to be chief justice. John Bolton, who resigned in December as President Bush's U.N. ambassador, was an assistant attorney general under Reagan.

"Thurmond just gave these names to Bolton they will testify for the Democrats and we want to know what they are going to say," a Justice Department official told a counterpart at the FBI, according to a memo in Rehnquist's file.

Bolton?!?!?! It never ceases to amaze me that certain people keep popping up in Republican power circles for what seems like eternity. Bolton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Baker, Perle… These guys are like political zombies. The only way to get rid of them is a metaphorical shot to the head (see Rumsfeld, Donald).