recess appointments…

Posted on Tuesday 13 November 2007


President Bush’s controversial Surgeon General nominee, Dr. James Holsinger, has resigned from the board of trustees of the Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY. From a seminary e-mail:

From: Communication Office [at Asbury Seminary]
To: ATS Info, Staff News, Faculty News
Subject: Announcement from the Board of Trustees
November 12, 2007 3:53PM

The Asbury Theological Seminary Board of Trustees met on November 12, 2007. The board discussed the resignation letters submitted by Dr. James Holsinger and Mr. Phillip Connolly. Following this discussion and prayer, the board voted unanimously to receive these resignation letters with regret. We realize from time to time board members resign before the end of a their term, however we have a deep appreciation for the many years of service, dedication and commitment of Dr. Holsinger and Mr. Connolly. The board of trustees wishes them both all the best in their future endeavors.
The Board of Trustees

Holsinger is resigning before the end of his term. A source in Wilmore tells Bible Belt Blogger that Holsinger is resigning because he expects to be recess appointed as Surgeon General:

Holsinger’s nomination, opposed by several leading Democrats, has stalled in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. But Holsinger is telling people the president plans to appoint him to the post anyway once the Congress goes into its holiday recess.

Holsinger has come under intense criticism for his long history of prejudice toward gays and lesbians. He founded a church that “ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian” and “opposed a decision to allow a practicing lesbian to be an associate pastor” in the United Methodist Church. In 1991, he also authored a graphic document arguing that gay sex is “intuitively” unnatural and can lead to “lacerations, perforations and deaths.” Last month, ThinkProgress noted that three months after his July hearing, Holsinger has still not responded to a Senate health committee follow-up questionnaire. Without his answers, the committee has not scheduled a vote on his nomination. Looks like the committee might never receive a response from Holsinger now.

Recess appointments, presumabley a mechanism designed for emergencies, has become a routine tool for Bush to avoid confirmation fights – a tool he’s used a record 167 times. Like his appointment of John Bolton, appointing James Holsinger as Surgeon General is a way to inflict yet another ideologue on the American people. Dr. Holsinger is best known for his views on Homosexuality. He thinks it’s a bad idea and that people ought to quit it. Here’s an exerpt from supporters at Americans for Truth:
Dear Americans For Truth Reader,

Folks, anti-Christian homosexual activists and their liberal allies are out again in force to take down another good man — Dr. James Holsinger, Jr., President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General – who happens to agree with the ancient Judeo-Christian moral understanding of homosexual practice as unnatural, unhealthy and wrong.

The ABC report below is Orwellian in its framing of the campaign against Dr. Holsinger – a Christian medical doctor (cardiologist) who also holds a doctorate in anatomy and physiology. Holsinger is being vilified because he wrote in 1991 that male homosexual sex practices are unhealthy, and because he believes that men and women can abandon homosexuality.

The ABC report below — which includes a politically correct quote by the spokesman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — implies that Holsinger’s writings, such as his 1991 paper, “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality,” are obsolete and way outside of the scientific mainstream. Hello… Has there been some change in human anatomy (perhaps some hyperactive “evolutionary” mutation in the last 16 years) that suddenly makes rectal sex between men natural and good for the human body?
I don’t actually think of myself as a member of the "anti-Christian homosexual activists and their liberal allies" set. I’m more in the "doctors are supposed to deliver health care, not tell people how they should live" group. Where Bush finds these people is beyond me. We have a strong contingency of seasoned diplomats, but Bush chooses an anti-U.N. right wing ideologue, John Bolton, for the U.N. We have a distinguished set of lawyers and judges all over America, but Bush chooses Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General and Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court – his personal lawyers. There are plenty of available rational doctors in America for him to choose from. But, for Surgeon General, he picks a theological ideologue, anti-homosexual  cardiologist from the VA hospitals over the objections of the Senate.

One can only look at Mr. Bush’s choices as marginalia, people who only shine in the right wing whacko world.
  1.  
    Smoooochie
    November 13, 2007 | 8:58 PM
     

    “Where Bush finds these people is beyond me.”

    Well, the way I see it is if you sleep with dogs long enough you’re going to end up with fleas. Bush has been sleeping with the dogs for so long that he’s convinced that having fleas is the norm.

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