Howard Dean on Democratic Values:
“We all should speak about our values. I think one of the mistakes we’ve made is to not understand that most Americans believe that moral values include making sure that kids don’t go to bed hungry at night. The Republicans are cutting the school lunch program. We want to make sure that everybody in America has health insurance. That is a moral value. The Republicans are kicking people off their health care. We ought to talk about our values. …I’m a Democrat because of my moral values. I believe that we can’t leave anybody behind. We are the party of America’s values.”
That is a thing of beauty. (via dnc.org).
Looks like the Government Accountability Office may just right another wrong, this time regarding the FDA’s decision to not make Plan B available without a prescription.
A congressional audit released Monday cited “unusual” steps in the FDA’s initial rejection of over-the-counter emergency contraception, including conflicting accounts of whether top officials made the decision even before scientists finished reviewing the evidence.
The FDA is reconsidering the decision on the pill, sold under the brand Plan B.
The GAO’s report found many interesting details regarding Plan B’s FDA process, including the fact that FDA scientists “overwhelmingly backed over-the-counter sales of the Plan B brand for all ages” and that FDA officials knowingly chose to ignore the scientists’s advice.
Fortunately, the FDA is re-reviewing the decision, and Health & Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has been petitioned to give a final, unbiased decision. And that decision has got to be straight-forward. Plan B needs to be available without prescription for anyone woman who wants it. Studies have shown that unwanted pregnancies will go down drastically. Women who are raped or the victim of incest, but are too frightened to contact authorities, can use this as a form of emergency contraception. Our society as a whole will benefit from Plan B being available.
The Rude Pundit can be quite fun to read. But as you dig through his biting humor and scathing attacks, you find someone who is very intelligent about politics, and willing to do much more research than I ever would. For example, take President Bush’s speech where Bush quotes “Democratic leaders” who made statements supporting the war in Iraq.
But who were those Democrats? What was the context for the statements that Bush quoted? Leave it to the Pundit to track down the details! Put into context, the three statements obviously do not mean what Bush wants us to think they mean. For example:
The second quote is from Senator Carl Levin, who was not really beatin’ the Iraq war drums when he said, on CNN’s Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer on December 16, 2001, in answer to Blitzer’s question about whether or not Saddam Hussein was a terrorist: “I agree, but exactly the way Senator Kyl put it. The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power. But that does not mean he is the next target. And the commitment to do that, it seems to me, could be disruptive of our alliance that still has work to do in Afghanistan. And a lot will depend on what the facts are in various places as to what terrorist groups are doing, and as to whether or not we have facts as to whether or not the Iraqis have been involved in the terrorist attack of September 11, or whether or not Saddam is getting a weapon of mass destruction and is close to it. So facts will determine what our next targets are.“
(Emphasis is mine)
Ah, now in context, Levin was actually not endorsing the war we got into at all. Levin wanted proof, proof that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks (which we now know they were not) and proof that there were weapons of mass destruction (ditto). This is not the smoking gun Bush seems to think it is. Instead, it’s more proof that Democrats only voted for the war because Bush manipulated intelligence to make it seem like Iraq was a threat.
