I was outraged to read in yesterday's Washington Post of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona testimony before Congress that multiple times during his four year tenure (2002-2006) he was silenced and muffled by Bush's politcal appointees from giving his scientificly based professional opinion on controversial public health issues like stem cell research. As I've written before, this is an issue that is grossly misunderstood by the public and greatly misrepresented by Pres. Bush and large portions of the right wing (I am proud that all the LDS Senators support stem cell research). As surgeon general Carmona felt he had a responsibility and opportunity to educate the public on the issue, but chunks of his speeches were cut by Bush's people and his appearances were controlled by the White House. He was even instructed to mention Pres. Bush's name at least 3 times per page during his speeches! Unfortunately politcal handling of the SG isn't brand new as former Surgeons General under Reagan and Clinton both testified to feeling they didn't have free professional reign, though they both said that nothing they experienced compares to what Bush is doing.
While I am on the subject of Bush infuriating me, can you believe his response to the Scooter Libby sentencing? The story goes that a year or two ago an illegal leak of someone's name occured and a NY Times reporter was put in jail for not revealing her sources (essentially protecting Bush's people as it turns out). Bush said that once he found out who the source was he would punish and fire that person and seemed supportive of criminal proceedings. Well, it turned out that at least one of those people (Karl Rove and CIA director Richard Armitage also had) was Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, a HUGELY important person and very close to Bush. Bush backpedaled and didn't fire him or support criminal charges, though Libby was eventually charged with obstruction of justice (I'm fuzzy on the exact details but I think that's right). A jury convicted him and a judge sentenced him to 30 months in jail. An unbelievable story in its own right if it had ended there as Libby became the highest ranking official to be convicted of criminal charges since the early 80's, but it gets worse. Just before Libby was about start serving time (he already had a prison ID number), Bush "commuted" his sentence saying it was excessive for the crime and that the evidence at trial didn't warrant this. Unbelievable! It's true that he didn't outright "pardon" him, meaning forgive the crime and overturn the conviction, but he's unintentionally opened a legal can of worms by commuting him. This essentially means that he accepts the conviction but forgives Libby of his jail time, and as a result, every person who has been or will be convicted on similar charges will argue that they deserve the same punishment Libby got. This is outrageous. This from the President who speaks so strongly for "mandatory minimum" sentences because "activist judges" take the law into their own hands and weakly punish criminals. I find such blatant hypocrisy so frustrating. You'll also notice Harriet Miers in the above photo; remember her? On the same day as what might arguably be his biggest achievement as President (confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts), Bush nominated his personal White House Lawyer to the Supreme Court. That obviously bombed, and now apparently her testimony about the justice department firings has been subpeoned, and Bush has ordered her and another advisor Sara Taylor, not to testify. Unbelievable. That's a whole other long story I won't get into.
Finally, have your heard about the outrageous news from the Dept of Homeland Security about permanent residency applications? There are a set number of green cards they give out every year (except to spouses of US citizens, there is an unlimited number of those, THANK GOODNESS!) and earlier this year a bulletin went out saying that more applications would be accepted for people from India and a couple other places. People who had been waiting 9-10 years could finally apply! People canceled trips, rushed to be married, have relatives wait on line to get documents, hired lawyers in order to get everything together by the July 2nd deadline. On July 2nd, the very day that everyone had their applications in, Homeland Security announced that they had made a mistake and the quota was already filled and there were no more green cards available. Being in the middle of a huge immigration process myself (though with the guarantee that a green card is available for Sarah) I understand the unbelievable stress, anxiety and frustration the process brings, not to mention the large amounts of money that gets spent (we've easily spent more than $1200 so far and have a ways to go) and I am beyond outraged and ashamed at the department's actions. According to a Washington Post article, hundreds of people from India responded to this terrible disappointment with a protest worthy of Ghandi, sending boxes of flowers to the department headquarters. Apparently they've received hundreds and hundreds of boxes of flowers from angry protesters. What an admirable way to channel anger and frustration. I wonder if I could be capable such a response. I hope I don't have to find out!
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