National radio program

March 2, 2011
Florida is the epicenter of a prescription drug abuse epidemic. Each day in communities from Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale, thousands of doses of powerful narcotics like oxycodoneare dispensed in pain clinics — storefront operations also called "pill mills."
When he started at the Broward County Sheriff's department 30 years ago, Al Lamberti says, the department was raidingcrack houses and busting junkies.
"Nowadays, the drug dealers are working out of strip malls," he says.
Lamberti heads the sheriff's office in a county that includes Fort Lauderdale. It's a city thathas become a destination not just for spring breakers but also for addicts and drug traffickers.
"We have more pain clinics than [we have] McDonald's [restaurants]," he says. "They're taking theirtoll."
Lamberti recently joined a dozen federal, state and local law enforcement officials at a news conference held to announce a major crackdown on Florida's pill mills. It was a series of busts, fromPalm Beach to Miami that included more than 20 arrests and the seizure of more than $22 million in cash, exotic cars and real estate.

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The Supreme Courttakes up a major case Wednesday stemming from the war on terrorism. At issue is whether former Attorney General John Ashcroft is entitled to immunity from a lawsuit claiming he misused the law toarrest a U.S. citizen under false pretenses.
A federal appeals court panel composed of all Republican appointees ruled 2-1 that the case should proceed to trial because the allegations, if true, are"repugnant to the Constitution." The Obama administration appealed to the Supreme Court.
At the center of the case is a former star running back at the University of Idaho. Lavoni Kidd, the son of aprison guard and an IBM worker, left the Christian faith of his family and converted to Islam while he was in college, changing his name to Abdullah al-Kidd.
None of this was particularly remarkable...