Doctor's impact was felt across valley
Dr. Louise Swanberg was by all accounts a woman who lived life to the fullest and embraced each and every day.
Perhaps that’s why her unexpected death on Dec. 2 sent shockwaves throughout the Flathead Valley.
Swanberg, 65, succumbed to a sudden-onset acute infection, and the valley lost a brilliant and compassionate doctor. Many of her patients — and she had a lot of them — have shared their remembrances of her as they’ve struggled to realize they’ve lost not only their doctor but also a good friend.
She was a doctor who gave each patient special attention and care, they said. She was interested in their lives as well as their medical conditions. She was a great storyteller, a terrific diagnostician and a woman who was as talented as she was passionate about her many interests.
Most of all, she was one of us, and she’ll be deeply, deeply missed.
Executive action overreach
Two nationwide election victories are testament to President Obama’s personal magnetism, but the Democratic Party’s implosion during the six years of his presidency is testament to the unpopularity of his policies.
Even liberal New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said last month that Obamacare was a mistake. More than 60 percent of Americans agree with him.
“Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them,” Schumer said. “We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem — health care reform.”
The kind of arrogance that gave us a one-party solution to health care is now being repeated (no, supersized!) in the one-person solution to immigration that President Obama has delivered in the form of an executive order to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. Polls show that more than 70 percent of the American people disagree with this agenda.
More importantly, 24 states have now signed on to a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s legal authority to do what he has done. Montana Attorney General Tim Fox joined that lawsuit last week, and we applaud him for taking action against what he considers an unconstitutional power grab by the president.
“This lawsuit is not about immigration,” Fox said. “It is about the rule of law, presidential power and the structural limits of the U.S. Constitution.”
President Obama said he had to take action because the Congress had chosen not to, but there is nothing in the Constitution which grants the president such authority. If the Congress chooses not to legislate, that is a congressional decision with just as much validity as its decisions to pass good laws or even bad laws.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.