A FAVOR TO A FRIEND. At OpinionJournal today, a chilling tale of the Orwellian persecution of a citizen accused of taking drugs: His lawyer tells how the brownshirts "raided drugstores near [his] home; seized his medical records without going through the required process... leaked false information... that he was about to plead guilty to a felony; threatened to make his medical records public unless he pled guilty to a felony he didn't commit... he, and I, worry about the precedent that's being set in this case. So should you."

I guess most of you have already figured out that the citizen suffering this Kafka nightmare is Rush Limbaugh. I mean, try to imagine any other celebrity drug user -- or, for that matter, drug decriminalization advocate -- getting this kind of sympathetic treatment at the nation's #1 right-wing rantskeller.

Just last June, OJ's Benjamin Ivory seemed close to retching as he noted that the French Ministry of Culture has honored "rocker Lou Reed, who wrote a hymn to 'Heroin.'" OJ was also hard on Reason editor Nick Gillespie for his alleged crimes against the drug war, calling his magazine "the High Times of the policy world," and accusing its staff of smoking marijuana at editorial meetings.

But let a friend of La Causa get caught in the noose, and on goes the libertarian mask. Brothers and sisters! When they came for Rush, I did nothing because I was not a millionaire blowhard...

Maybe next week, Rolling Stone will give a page or two to Courtney Love's lawyer... nah, they have some standards.