RUSH TO JUSTICE

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show bully, is in big trouble. He's
admitted to being addicted to painkillers. His former housemaid, Wilma
Cline, testifies that he got her to supply him with enough illegal drugs to
"kill a horse," and apparently has given authorities records on some 30,000
illegal drugs that he purchased.

Limbaugh admitted his addiction, checked himself into a rehab center, and
called one of the best trial lawyers in America, Roy Black, to deal with
the prosecutors. He could get up to five years for his repeat offenses.
Given the scope of his alleged activity and his prominence, prosecutors
will have a hard time giving him a pass.

Limbaugh's troubles have had the expected effect among the barracudas of
the press. Liberals chortle at his hypocrisy and suggest the book should be
thrown at him. Conservatives like moralist and gambling addict William
Bennett plead ignorance and duck. National Review columnist and former Bush
speechwriter David Frum gives Rush a pass: "I don't think any less of him
for having ordinary frailties. The question is, do you face up to them in a
manful way, which it sounds like he did." Others try to draw a moral
distinction between those who become addicted from painkillers and those
who buy other drugs for their pain. But both sustain the criminal drug
market, the underground crime world with its connections to drug mafia and
terrorists.

In fact, what Limbaugh is struggling with is a terrible, brutal addiction,
a destructive disease that afflicts many Americans. What Limbaugh needs is
treatment, not prosecution. It is good that he checked himself into a rehab
center, although 30 days is not likely to suffice to rid him of a habit as
bad that this one reportedly is. The last thing Limbaugh needs is to be
locked up in a cell for falling pray to a disease that consumes him.

Limbaugh of course, denounces treatment not jail as wooly-headed liberal
coddling of crime. He's of the lock 'em up, zero tolerance school of jail
cell conservatives.

"Drug use.. is destroying this country," Limbaugh has ranted. "And so if
people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and
they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

He added, "Too many Whites are getting away with drug use. Too many Whites
are getting away with drug sales. Too many Whites are getting away with
trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start
letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are
breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting
away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."

Now Rush is seeking a personal exemption from those very laws, and those
very sentiments. And, to ensure he gets it, this tribune who rails against
trial lawyers has hired himself one of the best. This desire for a personal
exception isn't unique. Any father would do what Governor Jeb Bush did,
when he sought to keep his daughter Noelle from being locked up when she
was arrested for using a false prescription to try to buy drugs at a
Florida pharmacy. Or seek the same privacy that President Bush sought for
his daughter who was cited for using a false driver's license to order a
drink when she was underage.

But no society can long abide one set of rules for the privileged and
another for the poor, one for the connected and another for the rest of us.
It isn't Rush's hypocrisy that is the problem. It is that you can't plead
for an exemption to the law simply because you are rich, powerful or
conservative. The answer, however, is not to enforce bad laws on Limbaugh,
but to change those laws.

And in this, Limbaugh has a major role to play. His responsibility is to
get himself healthy, not to go to jail. But at the same time, if he isn't
going to jail - as he shouldn't - then he has a responsibility to use his
power and influence, his millions of viewers, to campaign to change our
drug laws. He should lead the lobby for treatment rather than jail for
addicts. He should campaign not simply on the dangers of addiction, but on
the folly of locking up people who suffer from a disease.

Conservatives don't have to condemn Limbaugh for falling prey to a terrible
addiction. But they can't give Limbaugh a pass and throw the book at young
men and women growing up on mean streets, with far less hope and far more
reason to seek an escape from despair. Let's pray that Rush gives himself
the time and treatment needed to break his habit. But let's offer treatment
to the young and the poor as well as the old and the wealthy. One set of
rules, as conservatives like to say, for everyone.

Jesse L. Jackson Sr. is founder and president of the Chicago-based
Rainbow/Push Coalition.