Free Republic

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp?Page=/Commentary/archive/200604/COM20060407a.html Time to Rein in the False Claims Act By Richard Samp CNSNews.com Commentary April 07, 2006 The federal False Claims Act (FCA) has long been recognized as a full employment act for plaintiffs' lawyers. The game is to encourage fired employees to pose as "whistleblowers," reporting to the federal government on their former employees' alleged wrongdoing. They file suit in the name of the United States as "private attorneys general," and then demand a 30 percent cut of whatever the employer pays in settlement to make the case go away. In the process, the good names of reputable companies...

Can you imagine what our country would be like if Spitzer was successfull in putting all of his targets out of business? He'd catapult us into the 19th century. A Harvard Medical School study found that doctors implanted more than 2.25 million pacemakers and 400,000 defibrillators in the United States from 1990 to 2002. Malfunctions were directly responsible for just 61 deaths (half from each type of device). While every accidental death is tragic, a fatal error rate of 0.002 percent hardly appears to be the malfeasance these lawsuits suggest. ...Spitzer's solution of (supposedly) "erring on the side of caution"...

...Union membership has declined steadily for decades, but don't think unions are going away. The Service Employees International Union, for one, is trying to reverse the trend by waging an aggressive war against business...

...PETA's opposition to the kind of necessary scientific research -- inquiry that may save lives and uncover the mystery of cancer or Alzheimer's -- is beyond foolish; it is willfully destructive. And therein lies PETA's agenda: It seeks to stop science and reason, the twin lights of ethics -- a word badly misappropriated by PETA itself -- that give us better, safer medicine and unrivaled excellence. Its conspiratorial mindset and invasive policies are now a national danger...

Inside the Beltway- Wonder why they're called "green" groups? Public Interest Watch is calling for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate some of the top environmental charities for paying "enormous" salaries to their executives. "These groups literally beg for donations, giving the impression that they cannot accomplish their mission unless the average citizen pitches in," says Lewis Fein, the watchdog group's executive director. "At the same time, they are quietly paying their executives huge six-figure salaries." How huge? Mr. Fein says contributors, for instance, might be "shocked to learn that their financial sacrifice is -- in part -- funding an...