Over at Electric City Weblog, Gregg Smith dives headfirst into the speculation on Montana’s lefty blogs over what Denny Rehberg’s blood alcohol content was on the night of the Aug. 27 boat crash and what it means. I agree with his post entirely. Rehberg said he had less than two pints of Cold Smoke Scotch Ale that night and his BAC was 0.05 according to a blood test taken around three hours after the crash. Some bloggers think he’s lying.
Those of us in Montana’s so-called “mainstream media,” which I guess means the news organizations covering the story to the extent that we are interviewing the authorities and victims involved and digging where we can – in other words reporting – are no strangers to criticism that we are somehow not doing our jobs or failing to ask tough questions. This boat crash has been no exception, which is fine. But I think our job, if we are doing it responsibly, is to print the facts and nothing more. Ignoring absurd inferences about what Rehberg’s BAC was on the night of the crash is par for the course, but Smith says it better than I could. Here’s an excerpt, but the whole post is a must-read.
Which brings me to the 3 hour meme. This has been repeated so much by the left-wing blogosphere, that even the Montana press is biting into it. It goes something like this: Sure, Congressman Rehberg was a .05, but that was 3 hours after the accident. In order for him to have been a .05 so much after the fact, he must have a) drank a whole bunch or b) been waaay over the “legal limit” when he got in the boat or c) been really, really drunk when he got in the boat. The latest to fall victim to this assumption is Matt Singer.
Can’t do it.
First, there are a myriad of factors that come into play when trying to determine BAC. I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, but I can tell you that I have deposed a few of them over the years and have learned enough to know that the simple tables often used don’t tell the whole story.
What is the person’s weight? Male or female? What did the person drink? When did the person drink? When did the person drink each particular drink? How much did the person drink? What is the person’s individual capacity for absorbtion and elimination of alochol? Did the person eat? When? What? Is the person tired? What test was utilized to determine BAC? All of these factors and more come into play in determining what a person’s BAC was at any given time.