The op-ed pieces by one Greg Sandlen from the Heartland Institute and Ed Fuelner of the Heritage Foundation (hidden meanings?) carried recently in this newspaper are some of the spookiest pieces of paranoiac and schizophrenic writings I have ever came near.

These authors could write another Harry Potter series and a myth about wizards and broomstick locomotion would become a catacomb of cobwebs, dead bodies and horror stories out performing anything Potter’s author or Hollywood could concoct.

For instance, the medical information network so demanded by our medical establishment and paid for by the stimulus becomes, under Sandlen’s pen, a brew of deadly information.

This data bank would provide the evil eye of government with the ability to line us up, particularly those who reach my age of 85, and select those who will be allowed to die without further medical aid.

I would be standing or lying alongside Sarah Palin’s mentally deficient son to wait for the grim reaper to cut us down and save money for the rest of you.

That, according to Sandlen, has happened in England and will happen here if the evil geniuses that find problems with our health care succeed.

Harry Potter’s school was Hogwash.

We need an even more derisive term for the offal disgorged by Sandlen’s piece of spoiled, fermented and stewed garbage.

The Heartland Institute apparently attracts sufficient financial reward to weave such nightmares.

The “Institute” then feeds the “story” to the gullible such as – while I hate to say it – Sarah Palin.

Sarah is a very attractive, sharp and sagacious person in analyzing the matters she is familiar with: energy, the rights of the unborn and that portion of the USA that lays to our extreme Northwest.

I understand why she might fear things out of her knowledge but she should stick to facts with which she is familiar.

Otherwise, her comments are simply Twitter.

Too many are listening to the whackos who dominate much of our media.

These wild-eyed attention getters do not have a better government in mind.

They only want to attract listeners who can be filled with fear and foreboding about anything the government proposes.

Their blathering causes harm to any decent and reasonable handling of our health care and gives credence to radical views and legislation.

Town hall meetings are disrupted and lack of honest and reasonable discussion of issues causes dysfunction in an already dysfunctional Washington.

As a direct result the Congress may well enact legislation far more widesweeping than could otherwise be enacted and would otherwise be acceptable.

The chance for a financially sound and practical health plan may well be missed.

Herbert E. Phillipson Jr. lives in Dowagiac.