http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/18/rep-barney-frank-critics-face-town-hall-event/
"Dr. Sheila Levitt, a physician from Newton, said she hoped for changes that would support primary care physicians who are not paid as much as specialists. She said some of the rowdy critics at the meeting appeared to be using the same ''talking points'' as those who showed up at similar meetings around the country."
The above has been widely quoted from the AP story about the Barney Frank town hall meeting in Dartmouth MA, and has been the main story on FoxNews.com for the past few hours......... also I find:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1191945&srvc=home&position=active
A Newton physician asked Frank why the Obama administration didn't anticipate the controversy over the so-called "death panels," which she suggested the insurance industry has trumped up in an "heinous abuse of people's fragility."
Frank said misinformation in an economy that has made people more fearful has led to needless concern over the issue.
"This notion that something in this bill would require people who are elderly or sick to be denied medical care or be killed is the single stupidest argument I have ever heard," Frank said.
But, can anyone find info on a Sheila Levitt (or Sheila anything) who lives or works in Newton, MA?
http://names.whitepages.com/Sheila/Levitt
White pages has 6 Sheila Levitt's in the USA, none are in MA.
http://profiles.massmedboard.org/MA-Physician-Profile-Choose-Doctor.asp?lname=Levitt&showActiveCB=showActiveCBVal&showMDCB=showMDCBVal&fname=&showDOCB=showDOCBVal&town=&specialty=&hospital=&submit1=Find+Physician
The Massachusetts Board of Registration on Medicine only lists two doctors registered to practice medicine in Massachusetts with the last name Levitt - James Levitt in Brockton MA and Lee Levitt in San Jose CA. If we search for doctors in MA with the first name Sheila we get 19 results, none of which have a last name even vaguely like Levitt.
http://profiles.massmedboard.org/MA-Physician-Profile-Choose-Doctor.asp?lname=&showActiveCB=showActiveCBVal&showMDCB=showMDCBVal&fname=Sheila&showDOCB=showDOCBVal&town=&specialty=&hospital=&submit1=Find+Physician
City of Newton MA has no property registered to Sheila Levitt:
http://www.ci.newton.ma.us/Assessors2003/Search.asp?hn=&st=&un=&on=Levitt
The only video I can find of the meeting doesn't include her question. Does anyone have video so I can see if she spoke her name and it got misattributed?
Did the press get both her first and last name completely wrong?, is her name wrong and she lied about being a doctor?, is she a plant?
Updates:
Probably not a planted question, just an anti-War, anti-Bush, anti-Gun moonbat who claims to be a doctor but no longer practices medicine and isn't registered to practice in MA:
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This NPR article has an updated version of the AP story that "corrects" her name to Leavitt.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112017748
There is no Sheila Leavitt (or any female Dr Leavitt) licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts:
http://profiles.massmedboard.org/MA-Physician-Profile-Choose-Doctor.asp?lname=Leavitt&showActiveCB=showActiveCBVal&showMDCB=showMDCBVal&fname=&showDOCB=showDOCBVal&town=&specialty=&hospital=&submit1=Find+Physician
There is a Sheila Leavitt and Andrew Lichtman who own a single family home in Newton, MA:
http://www.ci.newton.ma.us/Assessors2003/InteractiveMap.asp?id=21005+0001
There is no Sheila Lichtman licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts. There is an Andrew Lichtman (not sure if it's the same person) listed as an Anatomic Pathologist at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.
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Photo found:
"DARTMOUTH, MA - AUGUST 18: Sheila Leavitt asks a question during a town hall meeting where United States Representative Barney Frank spoke (D-MA) August 18, 2009 at the Dartmouth Council on Aging in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, accepted an invitation from the Democratic Town Committee of Dartmouth to speak on the major issues before Congress including healthcare reform and efforts to curb the abuses in the financial industry."
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Outlander3 found a story:
http://fishwars.blogspot.com/2005/07/uncle-sam-rest-in-peace.html
Sheila Leavitt, who owns the protest car, shown here has been noticed by Margery Eagan of the Boston Herald who wrote:
You could call Sheila Leavitt a nutty, annoying, unrelenting Newton leftie who home-schools the kids and raises chickens to share eggs with neighbors, not to eat. She is, of course, a vegetarian.
I see her as one of those rare people who puts their convictions on parade, then faces uneasy consequences. Like the beefy, mad, middle-aged guy who followed her around the Esplanade yesterday, before dawn, tearing down her "Impeach Bush'' posters as fast as she put them up. Or the trucker she said rear-ended her at a Mass Pike toll booth, sending her head into the steering wheel of her '88 Toyota Corolla with bumper stickers saying ``War is barbaric'' and ``Support our troops . . . Draft Jenna & Barbara,'' as in Bush.
How much easier, really, discretion? Or just waving the flag and sticking your popular ``Support the Troops'' yellow ribbon on the rear window.
No one's going to rear-end you for that.
Well, you should've seen Sheila Leavitt's in-your-face Toyota yesterday as this 54-year-old trained physician and mother of four in sundress and flip-flops did her ``one-person protest parade'' through the Back Bay and South End.
She'd spray-painted the car black like a hearse. On its roof, a cardboard Uncle Sam lay in state atop a black-and-white-painted cardboard coffin. ``Fake Elections. Fake President. Real Lies. Real War,'' the coffin read. ``Got Kids?'' read another sign. ``I want yours for cannon fodder.'' And another, the Lily Tomlin quote: ``No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up.''
Then for drivers, and there are plenty, who make obscene gestures, she has this rear bumper rejoinder, ``Is that finger well-informed?''
``I like the car,'' said Jack Davis, 38, passing by it yesterday. ``Why are all these young kids going over there to a war we can't win?''
Davis is black and blacks, says Leavitt, along with her Newton leftie neighbors, are most likely to give her a thumbs-up as she cruises Boston or chauffeurs her sometimes mortified children to music lessons or baseball practice. Her husband, though he shares her politics, doesn't like driving in the car at all. Or his children either. He's worried.
But some of their children's friends, Leavitt said, think she's ``cool.''
So what is going on here?
Well, Leavitt apparently is a once-regular suburbanite who's been radicalized and can't just go quietly anymore. She's thought Bush should be impeached since the war began. ``He lied about it.''
She worked for John Kerry's election, driving Ohio voters to polls. One was an 80-year-old, black double amputee who'd spoiled his mail-in ballot. She said getting another one, on Election Day, took three hours. She also said she saw hours-long lines at black precincts and none at white precincts. Now she's convinced GOP operatives stole the election and that the press has ignored it.
I think she's wrong, by the way - about the press, and Bush stealing the election and lying. To me, he heard what he wanted to hear, and then botched things big-time. Yet some new polls put me in the minority, Leavitt in the majority, though she's the first middle-age mother I've seen willing to drive around town making a spectacle of her ire.
``I can't understand why everybody doesn't, why they're just sitting on their butts watching fireworks,'' she said as four jet fighters zoomed by over head. ``My God, real people are being blown up.''
So Sheila Leavitt made yet another sign just for the fireworks set. "July 4, 2005, as we watch from our chairs Bush's Bombs bursting in air, should we feel patriotic, or merely psychotic?''
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She now drives a vegetable oil powered beetle that she is decorating with anti-handgun slogans:
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Here she admits to not currently practicing medicine:
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:iRY9HHAOoC8J:www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/Regional/Europe/Italy/Business_and_Economy/Real_Estate+%22Sheila+Leavitt%22+physician&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Italy House Scout
www.italyhousescout.com
An American agent offers assistance on finding and buying a house here. Images, links and services offered.
From the site: I am Sheila Leavitt, a homeowner in Tuscany and Liguria , as well as Maine and the Boston Massachusetts area, where I make my permanent home with my husband and four children. I am trained as a physician, but do not currently practice medicine; I hold Massachusetts Real Estate Broker's License # 9055871 (Buyers' Agent) Owning your own place in Italy is eminently possible. ...
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Gateway Pundit covers the story
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According to her son posting over at "Bucks Right" she hasn't practiced medicine in 26 years and met her husband at Medical School.
My research on that:
Andrew Lichtman (her husband) graduated from Univ. of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry in 1981. He then did his residency from 7/1/82 until 6/30/86 and was granted his medical license on 2/6/85.
http://profiles.massmedboard.org/MA-Physician-Profile-View-Doctor.asp?ID=22728
That matches up with what the son says. So if Sheila hasn't practiced medicine in 26 years that takes us back to 1983 when she too would have presumably been doing or have just completed her internship.
Interestingly I just realized that the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine list all doctors regardless of license status so if she had previously held a license and allowed it to lapse it should show on there.
That appears to indicate therefore that Sheila decided to get married after her one year medical internship (as opposed to undertaking a two to seven year residency) and never got a medical license. Sheila therefore is legally an M.D. but not a licensed physician allowed to practice medicine independently.
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Michelle Malkin is now covering the story.
