• No subpoena was not lethargy • Physician sends support to nurse • Nurses’ strike concerns No subpoena was not lethargy Your news story (July 13, 2006) on my testimony before an informational briefing of a committee of the Hawaii
• No subpoena was not lethargy
• Physician sends support to nurse
• Nurses’ strike concerns
No subpoena was not lethargy
Your news story (July 13, 2006) on my testimony before an informational briefing of a committee of the Hawaii Legislature editorially described my decision not to subpoena records to determine the activities of the National Security Agency as “lethargic.” Your editorial description is wrong.
The attorney general from one state of 50 (New Jersey) has issued subpoenas. The United States immediately sued New Jersey in federal court, with the complaint of the United States stating:
“(T)he United States seeks to prevent the disclosure of highly confidential and sensitive government information that the defendant officers . . . have sought to obtain from telecommunications carriers without proper authorization from the United States. Compliance with the subpoenas . . . would first place the carriers in a position of having to confirm or deny the existence of information that cannot be confirmed or denied without causing exceptionally grave harm to national security. . . . The defendant state officers’ attempts to obtain such information are invalid under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution and are preempted by the United States Constitution and various federal statutes.”
Since the filing of this lawsuit, New Jersey has put compliance with the subpoenas on hold until the legal issue is resolved. To my knowledge, no other state attorney general has issued such subpoenas. Rather than being lethargic as your article states, I believe my actions, and the actions of 48 of my 49 colleagues, are both prudent and legally correct, especially given that there is now a federal court forum where the issue of the legal validity of state subpoenas essentially challenging federal activities can be determined.
Your article also quotes Hawai‘i law professor Jon Van Dyke as stating that the reason for my decision not to issue subpoenas is: “The governor is a Republican and the president is a Republican. I don’t think it gets much more complicated than that.” This statement is nonsense, pure and simple, and is absurd on its face. More than half of my national attorney general colleagues — all of whom but one, like me, have issued no subpoenas — are Democrats. Indeed, ironically, a New York Times article on the New Jersey subpoenas quoted a Washington, D.C., law professor as stating that “New Jersey’s subpoenas — issued by a Democratic administration — appeared to be a ‘political move to try to embarrass the Bush administration’ . . . .”
Although my issuing likely illegal subpoenas would be a sure way to garner immediate publicity (as well as an immediate lawsuit against Hawai‘i by the United States), it would make no sense. And that is why I have not done it.
- Mark Bennett
Attorney General, State of Hawai‘i
Physician sends support to nurses
I am writing in support of the heartfelt and very courageous letter by Gaynell that appeared in the 7/11/06 paper. I am a family physician who worked in Kauai Medical Clinic and Wilcox for 16 years until last summer. My husband and I still live on Kaua‘i and consider it our home and community, even though for the past year I have been working as a “temporary doctor” in various remote rural areas of high need and high risk around the country.
I am very familiar with the increasing stresses faced by the Wilcox nurses over the last few years. My year of experience as a “traveling doc” in a variety of small communities has given me an even greater appreciation of the ever-increasing challenges they face and the incredible job they do. Since Gaynell stated the issues very clearly, there is no need to clarify this further. It’s not about the money (at least from the nurses’ point of view). Their decision to take a stand has to have been a difficult and painful one, made at great sacrifice to themselves and their families. I can only send them my wholehearted support and aloha from afar and wish them well in their efforts to truly care for their patients and their community.
Nurses’ strike concerns
As the nurses’ strike drags on, I have become more and more concerned about the quality of the care the patients are receiving. The nurses are striking to insure good quality care and have been replaced by nurses whose competence is unknown both to the public and to the hospital administrators. One wonders why these “replacement” nurses are unable to hold a regular job where they come from.
Wilcox Hospital and JCAHO have required their regular nurses to complete, at this hospital and nowhere else, a long list of things in order to be sure the nurse is competent. This list includes at least a two-week orientation to the unit the nurse will work on, CPR (taken only at Wilcox) IV starts, use of many machines including IVAC, fire and safety procedures, and some 15 or so others. These must all be passed by regular nurses every year. JCAHO comes and inspects the records to be sure each nurse has passed each requirement every year — at the hospital where they work.
If all this is required of regular nurses, why isn’t the same required of all “visiting” nurses? A regular nurse who does not keep her requirements up to date will not be able to work until they are all passed. It is quite obvious the “visiting” nurses would not have had time to pass all the requirements at Wilcox before starting to work.
How can the hospital settle for less for “visitors” than they require of their own? Where is JCAHO and why aren’t they checking on these requirements? Why is the Health Department doing nothing? Why has the governor not looked into quality of care at Wilcox under these illegal conditions? It is time for the overseers of hospitals to hold Wilcox to the same standards as every other hospital in the state — even during a strike. I hope patients will not enter Wilcox for anything but emergencies during this time of poor patient care.
The Wilcox nurses are striking for you, the public, and I hope you will back them up and demand the hospital hold their standard even during the strike. Come walk on the picket line, bring water or goodies to the strikers, and demand that the hospital come to the bargaining table.
