Thursday, November 16, 2006

Don't Reward Terrorism Unpunished

Five years ago today, the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, received letters laced with anthrax, a case which, as the Bulldog noted some time ago in this great post, has yet to be solved.

This is particularly important as far as I’m concerned because the person who should have resolved this officially (as former Health and Human Services director) is Tommy Thompson who, conveniently enough, announced that he’s going to seek the nomination of the Republican Party for president in ’08 (God, we just got through one election, and it’s starting all over again…).

As I noted in this fit of posting brilliance (insert your snark here)…

Actually, I have to admit that (incoming HHS Head Mike) Leavitt has a tough act to follow coming into the job after Tommy Thompson, who once wondered aloud at a Congressional hearing why al Qaeda had not yet poisoned our food supply. I think he was “put out to pasture” soon after that. This excerpt from a CNN article that I link to later was, shall we say, an “interesting” way to pay tribute to him also.

During his tenure, Thompson has led the department through the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease; the lethal spread of anthrax-laced letters and this year's shortage of the flu vaccine.
I was never able to determine what exactly it was that Thompson did to “lead the department through the first discovery of mad cow disease,” and the distribution of flu vaccine in this country has NEVER been handled properly by ANY HHS director under Bushco, but I KNOW he never solved the case of the letters laced with anthrax.

My guess is that Thompson, despite his claims in today’s CNN story, will be weeded out in the primaries pretty quickly, along with Rudy Giuliani (sooo funny that he thinks the Fundies will go for him since he’s a divorced, pro-choice Repug from a blue state). And if that’s the worst punishment Thompson is ever forced to endure, he should count his blessings.

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