The deadly truth about Rand Paul and the "certification racket"

The Washington Post's neocon queen Jen Rubin is JEB! 2016's biggest media cheerleader outside of the Fox World bubble.  And she has tasked herself the job of lighting the fuse to blow up Rand Paul's 2016 presidential hopes with a firebomb she dropped in the Post about Dr. Rand Paul's "board certification racket."

There was unfortunately some smoke already smoldering in the kindling. The story, first revealed in 2010 by the Louisville Courier-Journal, involved a dispute Dr. Paul, an ophthalmologist, had years ago with the authentic medical board that certifies ophthalmologists. The board created a requirement that physicians certified after 1992 had to be re-certified every ten years, and grandfathered an exemption for those who were certified by 1992. Paul was initially certified by the real organization in 1995, and fell into the group the new ruling effected, and he felt it unfairly burdened him while unfairly exempting others. He let his certification lapse in 2005, rather than submit to the new requirements for re-certification, and responded by creating his own certification organization, with himself as president, and then certified himself and other ophthalmologists similarly affected who wished to follow his lead. And of course he continued to advertise himself as a board certified ophthalmologist (by the new organization he created).

While this is certainly shady, it also certainly does not rise the level of a Karl Rove neocon "noble lie" used to hide the "deadly truth" of why the Iraq War was really fought, and why now the neocons want to fight it again.

Rand Paul has no chance of being the 2016 Republican nominee, whether an authentically certified ophthalmologist or not, but he will not look any more or less shady than the likely company he will keep on the primary debate floor.