It's been a HILL-tastic week ...

Of the five days this past week, I happily spent four of them all or in part on the Hill. Some days I hate the political machine and the fact that getting things done and getting good policy passed takes pushing the right buttons or pulling the right levers ... or cajoling the folks that intimately know those buttons and levers. It may be an inefficient, bureaucratic nightmare of a game, but most everyone has to jump through the same hoops --- and not everyone you're jumping with can you trust entirely 100% of the time. Nonetheless, it has been interesting to meet folks who truly choose to make this Capitol experience their careers, do a good job of it, and do it for the right reasons (or at least it appears to me) ... two of these folks include Senator Harkin's chief of staff and Tom himself. I had the opportunity to have lunch with both of them this past week, along with some of the other interns. Tom told us stories of his own internship experience back in the sixties, how he campaigned and lost his first race while finishing his last term of law school, his view of key issues and how to organize grassroots campaigns, and what it was like to raise his two daughters in DC and commute back and forth to Iowa almost every weekend. I was impressed and surprised that he stayed an extra half hour to visit with us, despite the fact that his staff was urging him to get back to his farm bill meetings with the Ag committee.

I was fortunate to witness two hearings this past week ... on Tuesday, I heard three former Surgeon Generals (Koop, Satcher, and Carmona) testify in front of the House Commitee on Oversight and Government Reform how each of them felt political pressure and interference contradicting their roles of delivering unbiased, scientifically-sound public health information to the American public. Carmona's testimony, by far, was the most incriminating against the Bush administration, and it was astonishing to learn what he was or was not allowed to do or say during his tenure from 2002 - 2006. For example, he was not allowed to speak about emergency contraception, abstinence-only sex education, or stem cells (and had political appointee speechwriters that would delete this information before events), was ordered to use President Bush's name or speak 'glowingly' about his health policies three times/page when delivering speeches, and had his travel to Special Olympics events denied. In light of his testimony, Bush's nominee for the 18th Surgeon General, James Holsinger, MD, of Kentucky, was grilled on Thursday's hearing in front of the Senate HELP committee (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) on whether he would use science versus theology or politics as the basis of his public health messages. Holsinger is concerning to me for other reasons, including a 1991 paper he wrote on the 'pathophysiology of male homosexuality' that leaves many questioning whether he can serve gay and lesbian Americans fairly and appropriately, lack of appropriate management over several sexual harrassment cases while he worked in the VA health administration, and the fact that he is not boarded in any medical field as either a generalist or a specialist as he has worked most of career in health care administration. It will be interesting to see what happens ... if the HELP committee does not approve his nomination, in theory, Holsinger would make it no farther than the Senate committee. However, Bush retains the authority to make a "recess" appointment, albeit for a shorter period of time, over the upcoming August break ... so even if Congress finds him unfit to serve as the next Surgeon General, he may still very well find himself in that position, courtesy of the President.