W and Personal Responsibility: Abstinence Only

Two noteworthy stories keep me from my appointed rounds this evening. Here’s one:

Former Surgeon General: Bush officials interfered for political reasons

The Associated Press hires some pretty good writers. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of today’s article on the subject. You can make up your own angry rant as you go along:

[Dr. Richard Carmona, the nation's 17th surgeon general, told lawmakers] he wasn't allowed to make a speech at the Special Olympics because it was viewed as benefiting a political opponent. However, he said he was asked to speak at events designed to benefit Republican lawmakers.

“The reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas,” said Carmona, who served from 2002 to 2006.

[A] report on global health challenges was never released after the administration demanded changes that he refused to make, Carmona said.

“I was told this would be a political document or you're not going to release it.” Carmona said. “I said it can't be a political document because the surgeon general never releases political documents.”

Carmona said … his speeches were edited by political appointees, and he was told not to talk about certain issues. For example, he supported comprehensive sex education that would include abstinence in the curriculum, rather than focusing solely on abstinence.

“However, there was already a policy in place that didn't want to hear the science, but wanted to - quote, unquote - 'preach abstinence,' which I felt was scientifically incorrect,” Carmona said.


The other thing that’s got me worked up is that Bush is planning to put himself in contempt of Congress this week by refusing to allow subpoenaed former aides to testify to Congress - especially one who wants to! - by claiming Executive Privilege.

Now you say something official-sounding like “Executive Privilege” and most peoples’ eyes glaze over, but I can make this very simple: Executive Privilege, while not in the Constitution (and therefore doesn’t automatically receive a free pass), is a reasonable judicial device created to protect a President’s ability to receive honest, uncompromised advice from his cabinet and advisers. Used responsibly, ie: on paper, it’s a good idea.

Sadly, I don’t know if it’s ever been claimed by anybody except to try to cover-up wrongdoings.

Here’s how Bush is perverting it: He is insisting that although he never spoke to said subpoenaed advisers about the matters they are to be questioned about, because he spoke to them at all, about anything, they are protected under the Harry-Potteresque cloak of Executive Privilege.

By this reading, the delivery boy in Midland who sneaks him his beers while he’s at the ranch is equally covered under Executive Privilege.

What makes it especially egregious - gives it that special “W was here” feeling - is that the matters the subpoenaed former aides were to be questioned about involve potential criminal wrongdoing on the part of the executive branch, and the administration itself is acting extra-legally to impede the investigation into its own misdeeds, counting on its stacked Supreme Court to let them off in the final reel. It’s positively Orwellian in its scope and it looks to me like it’ll probably work.

Future historians are going to climb all over each other and elbow the Clinton administration into obscurity in their zeal to expose the Machiavellian shenanigans of this cabal of crooks; especially since they’ve been so good at concealing their misdeeds while in office so far.

Present Americans, unfortunately, are fucked (although not as bad as current and future Iraqis).

And what is the loyal political opposition doing to address this rising tide of epic wrongdoing?

Fucking around, that’s what, mounting silly challenges like threatening to cut off the VP’s funding. It’s the cheapest kind of political theater, the Democratic equivalent of the GOP’s renaming French Fries “Freedom Fries” as a snipe at the French who were being sold by the administration as weak on terror while America’s leaders were busy ginning up a fake case for war with Iraq.

With friends like the Democrats...

Speaking of Bush’s fake case for war, yesterday morning (PST) CNN promoed the hell out of an upcoming Presidential address regarding the war in Iraq. When it finally aired, it wasn’t a sober assessment from the oval office at all, it was a live feed from a campaign-style partisan pep rally where W was regurgitating this week’s line of slightly re-tooled half-truths and obfuscations for the fawning faithful. At this late date, it was cringe-inducing.

As was Sen. McCain’s embarrassingly impassioned defense of the “progress” he swears we’re making in Iraq (I am not making this up) live from the Senate floor earlier in the day. Now that was TV! Oh CNN, why do you have to be such an undiscriminating whore?


Now it’s late, I’m tired and I have solved nothing. I don’t even feel better. I probably should have abstained after all…