Written By : John Hawkins

A while back, I wrote a post on fakes at the health care protests that mentioned Sheila Leavitt. Here’s the excerpt, quoted from Michelle Malkin’s blog, that concerned her:

Now, bloggers have raised questions about a left-wing activist who turned up at Barney Frank’s raucous town hall.

She’s Dr. Sheila Leavitt, identified in press reports as a “physician from Newton (MA).”

But the folks at AR15.com can’t find anyone licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts under the name “Sheila Leavitt.”

Kate at Small Dead Animals does the Googling the rest of the MSM won’t do and finds Leavitt’s trail of nutty, anti-Bush, anti-war activism.
Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit and Steven at Buck’s Right have more.

At Buck’s Right, a commenter who says he is Leavitt’s 16-year-old son says his mom did go to medical school — but “stopped actively practicing medicine 26 some odd years ago” to raise four children.

Update: It looks like Leavitt was channeling her husband’s persona. He’s a bona fide doctor currently practicing in Boston…

Someone claiming to be Sheila Leavitt (and I have no reason to doubt her) wrote me yesterday complaining about the story. She pointed me to the following link that features some emails from her. Here’s an excerpt:

…Furthermore, I put in many long years of training and, whether or not I am currently practicing, I have every right to refer to myself as a doctor.

…Ho, i might say, hum. Neither this information, nor Rush Limbaugh’s seal of approval on the “fake M.D.” label, make her a liar about her M.D. degree, nor a plant doing the bidding of anyone but her own unrelenting self. She is a citizen, an educated citizen with no claim to an active medical practice, but 4 years of medical school, an M.D. degree, a completed internship, a license (on record in the State of N.Y., although not currently active) to practice medicine, a couple of years in practice, and a year of residency at a fine Boston hospital, which she interrupted to raise a family. This makes her a fake—what?

Despite the fact that nothing in the original piece was inaccurate per se, I do think it’s worth noting that Sheila Leavitt received a M.D. degree and a medical license. I think that’s important because that last line in the excerpt could give people the impression, despite the contradictory info earlier, that Leavitt was a fake as opposed to an ex-doctor. That may seem to be a small point, but I had I known for sure that she was an ex-doctor, I sincerely doubt whether I would have included her in with the other fakes in that post.

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