Demagogue

Pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for morning-after pills don't seem to have many vigorous advocates in their corner. That's the view of Slate's William Saletan, who observes:

Who's fighting hardest for pro-life pharmacists? Pharmacists for Life. Now, there's a shocker. According to the (Washington) Post, the group "claims 1,600 members on six continents." Come on. That's less than 300 members per continent.

Saletan calls P4L's website "politically insane" — and it is. After Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich ordered the state's pharmacies to fill prescriptions for women wanting the new morning-after pill, even if it meant putting aside their employees' personal views, P4L flipped out.

P4L's attacks against Blagojevich (who is of Serbian-American ethnicity) have all the subtlety of a Fred Phelps poster. On Sunday, P4L referred to the governor's directive as "Rod 'Slobodan' Blagojevich's order" and one of its photo captions called the order "pharmacist religious cleansing."

Groups on the political fringe have long compared their adversaries' views and actions to those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. So, if nothing else, the firebrands at P4L deserve a tiny bit of credit for at least having the initiative to find a new crazed dictator to fill such a role: Slobodan Milosevic.