I agree with what I believe your general point to be -- that competent adults should have access to these drugs -- even if a doctor will not prescribe them. What doesn't make sense to me is the idea of using the police (or other authorities) to force people to undergo certain treatments. The police will only become involved if a crime is committed. Currently, the laws only allow access to these drugs with a doctor's prescription. If someone accesses these drugs without that prescription, that person has broken a law and can be arrested. It is not currently against the law to refuse medical treatment that may save a life. This is a minor distinction, but I believe it is important -- and it takes away from your argument.

Frank - You are right with everything you said, but I was merely equating those who advocate laws forcing people to accept life-saving treatment with the more dramatic "sending police to force them to undergo the treatment" -- in order to emphasize that when people advocate laws like the prescription drug laws, they are turning their fellow citizens into criminals -- who go to prison -- for doing nothing more than taking pharmaceutical products they want to use (for whatever reasons).

The rationale for those who believe in that -- "we have to save their lives by preventing them from doing bad things to themselves" -- should compel them to also favor laws forcing people to accept life-saving medical treatments even if they don't want that treatment.

Right. My only point was that those who want to use state police power to forcibly prevent people from harming themselves by taking drugs they want should have also favored laws requiring Terry Schiavo to have her feeding tube even if she didn't want it.

Really? Is that true? I dismissed this guy as an idiotic crank 20 years ago and have always thought Fox and others kept him around because of his consitency. I didn't realize anyone had any respect or admiration for him. I need to get out more.

He's a featured columnist in Time and The Washington Post. What other evidence would you like to see?

He thinks he is just making some important points that need to be said about the tragedy.

Of course he thinks his points are important, otherwise he wouldn't make them. But the whole point of his column today (did you read it?) is that nobody should try to make points -- important or not, valid or not -- out of the VT shootings. And he says that's especially true for those who don't wait a decent interval between the shootings and the point-making.

He isn't arguing against the drawing of invalid political conclusions from the shootings. He's arguing against the drawing of political conclusions of any kind, valid or otherwise.

Fair enough. It's hard to beat that. But at least she didn't then subject us to lectures about how wrong it is to try to exploit the VT shootings to fuel pre-existing political agendas.

When Krauthammer plays psychiatrist in his columns (as he does here), he's usually pretty ludicrous. He hasn't had a medical license in 25 years and he clearly hasn't kept up. His claim to fame as a psychiatrist was a paper in which he and the noted academic Gerald Klerman stated the obvious (that there are forms of mania secondary to other conditions) and gave it a diagnostic label, hardly the stuff of great scientific or clinical discovery.

There was a NYT article today from various psychiatric and pscyhological experts warning that no diagnosis of Cho was possible based on the snippets that are available. Of course, Krauthammer was on Fox pontifficating that Cho was not schizophrenic because he was too organized for that.

I think Krauthammer is even more ludicrious as a psychitarist than a political pundit, particularly when he tries to tout his medical credentials to fuel his punditry -- diagnosing various Democrats as insane, issuing medical opinions without any basis for political reasons -- just repugnant.

Among whom does this man command "respect and admiration"? I can't imagine that anyone can listen to or read his ravings (and that's what they are and that's what they have been for years) and not shudder with anxiety on the one hand or recoil in disgust on the other.

Many people - both in comments and by e-mail -- are objecting to my claim that he is one of the most respected pundits around among our media stars and the like.

It's a hard claim to prove or disprove, and maybe it's a little overstated, more a by-product of past respect than current opinion.

But I don't think so. I haven't done the research - just based more on recollection -- but it is common to hear people talking about him as though he is one of the "honest conservatives." The fact that he has a medical degree means, in their minds, that he's "smart." And the mere fact that he writes for Time and the Post, by itself, generates significant respect in their eyes.

Yes, a lot of people have come to see Krauthammer for the utterly dishonest hack that he is. Personallt, I think he's one of the least credible commentators anywhere (when I engage in my favorite exercise of reading things from 2002 and 2003, his stuff is invariably the worst, the most dishonest, the most warmongering, the most wrong, the most hideous on every level).

But I don't think that's how the Chris Matthews and Norah O'Donnells and Brian Williams and Howard Kurtzs and the rest of them think. I think they think he's a serious, credible, important voice in our public discourse.