Pravda on the Potomac

Totally grifting off the same post title as John Cole, because it's the best post title. From the testimony of the former Surgeon General:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

Oh, and hey, look --

WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Bush has ordered his former White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to defy a congressional subpoena and refuse to testify Thursday before a House panel investigating...

Anyone with legal training can feel free to enlighten me in comments as to why that is not totally batshit insane. Can you just blow off subpoenas because your boss tells you to? Aces.

This is, to a great degree, why you don't let rich people be criminals. They're bad at it. But that's the nub of another post, so it'll wait.

If the Senate Republicans would stop filibustering literally everything, I'd almost be pleased at this point. Did you know you can't get anything passed in the Senate with a simple 51-49 majority? You need 60 votes, if the other side filibusters. The Senate Republicans have decided to derail the business of the people, and simply, effectively, shut down Congress and the Senate in a really elegant manner which almost no one in America intuitively understands.

Yes, yes, the Senate is there to avoid the tyranny of the majority, and force compromise. What no one seems to have anticipated, however, was a minority party that would simply refuse to compromise, ever. The Founding Fathers never anticipated a party of men for whom simple, childish obstructionism was a perfectly acceptable manner in which to while away the time while collecting a big-ass government paycheck.

Yet another reason I really would like to see the Senate abolished, but it ain't happening.