In a piece that said the program was “shrouded in secrecy,” Journal writer Thom Cole argued that the secrecy prevents the public from finding out if there are problems with the program. Cole referred to Colorado, in which a just a few doctors provide most of the certifications in the state. One doctor was found to have signed 200 certifications in one day. Another, who charges $125 per consultation, was recently arrested on suspicion that he gave false information to the state.

But if just a handful of doctors are providing certifications in New Mexico, it’s impossible to find out due to the rules, said Cole:

So, does New Mexico, like Colorado, have a few doctors who account for a large percentage of the patient certifications for the marijuana program?

Who knows?

The state Health Department refused a request to provide documents that would show the names of certifying doctors and the number of times each doctor had provided a patient certification.

In a strongly worded response today, Vigil said  that the newspaper shouldn’t set itself up to police physicians, especially given that the drug is still illegal under federal law:

The reporter and editors apparently doesn’t trust the New Mexico Medical Board to perform its responsibility of monitoring the work of the state’s physicians and have decided to take the job on themselves. After all, who better to police physicians than opinionated newspaper columnists and editors?

…The Journal neglected to mention the biggest challenge we face in operating a medical cannabis program under state law. Marijuana use is illegal under federal law. … We already have many physicians who are too worried about a potential negative impact on their practice to certify patients. …

The Journal wants to see if there are a few physicians who are certifying many patients. What’s too many? Who decides — the Journal?

Unfortunately, because I didn’t have much of a problem with much of Cole’s piece, the “love-in” part of the column made the headline (at least in the online version, I only read the Journal in print form on Sundays. Sorry, guys). So it automatically colors the piece as being critical of the liberal nature of the town hall.

And it was undoubtedly friendlier to Luján than health care town hall meetings have been to some of his colleagues during their August recess.

One of Cole’s colleague at the Albuquerque Journal reported there were 61 “left-leaning” questions to 17 “right-leaning” questions. Corey Pein of the Santa Fe Reporter wrote, “That sounds fairly representative of Santa Fe’s political demographics.”

In other words, the demographics of the town hall were pretty much right for the city where it was held.

Congressman Barney Frank, the very-liberal Congressman from the very-liberal Massachusetts, put it best when he confronted some of the town-hall screamers at a recent town hall in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

An attendee got smacked down by the openly gay, Jewish Congressman when she called the health care reform legislation a “Nazi policy” and asked why he supported such legislation.

“On what planet do you spend most of your time?” Frank asked rhetorically. And later, “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.”

And what he said is, in many respects, true. Not only for the screamers in the town hall meetings, but also for people like Sarah Palin and her “death panels” and Newt Gingrich and just about any of his statements on health care reform. These screamers, in both the town halls and on cable news, want to disrupt, not discuss.

If a reporter wanted to find this type of distraction, he could have went to Clovis for a town hall meeting with U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, were there were 400 people, many of which were against the public option. Which is not a surprise because the area is as conservative as Santa Fe is liberal.

What wasn’t reported, however, about the Clovis town hall, however, was that at least a quarter of the audience were members of AFL-CIO. And so were supportive of the public option.

But that isn’t the sort of thing that makes headlines. It’s the screamers who don’t want to debate, but instead disrupt, that make the headlines.

Oh, and as for those “death panels” that the conservative bigwigs Sarah Palin have been talking about made up? Leslie Linthicum in her Up Front column today, highlights that what they say is a load of… you know what.

Linthicum quotes Stacey Williams Abdalla, a registered nurse at Hospice of the Sandias, who said of end-of-life counseling, “It’s not offering euthanasia. It’s not encouraging decisions in either way. It’s showing options.”

This is the sort of rational debate that we need to have about this legislation. On its merits and facts, not on distorted or blatantly made up provisions.

Even if it doesn’t make the best headline.