This piece in the NY Times is certainly interesting, especially in relation to the Target story I linked to yesterday:
Congressional investigators have documented some highly suspect maneuvering behind the Food and Drug Administration's decision last year to reject over-the-counter sales of the controversial morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B. The investigation, by the Government Accountability Office, stopped short of asserting that political considerations had led agency officials to overrule their own experts and outside advisers. But the most plausible inference one can draw is that politics or ideology was allowed to trump science as higher-ups at the agency searched for rationales to keep access to the contraceptive restricted.
The investigators looked only within the F.D.A. and did not consider any communications between agency officials and other parts of the executive branch, so they had no way to determine whether political pressure was exerted from elsewhere. But they did find four unusual aspects of the decision-making process that look hard to justify.
First, directors of the offices that would normally handle the issue disagreed with the decision and did not sign the rejection letter. Second, high-level managers intervened more in this case than in any other case involving a switch from prescription to nonprescription status.
Third, and most shocking, the heads of several key offices said they had been told by high-level management that the switch would be denied months before their reviews of the application were even completed, a contention that high officials deny. Fourth, the rationale used to justify the rejection was a novel one: the agency expressed concern that younger adolescents might engage in unsafe sexual behavior with Plan B available, an age-based criterion never before raised for an over-the-counter contraceptive.
It seems pretty clear that those running the agency were looking desperately for a reason - any reason - to prevent easy access to a contraceptive that is a red flag to the administration's conservative base. In doing so, they tarnished the reputation of an agency whose decisions are supposed to be based on science. Imagine if this were available over the counter, suddenly the fundie pharmacists lose the ability to deny this option to women, and we sure as shit can't have that. I guess the FDA is now following the Kansas school board's redefinition of "science" to mean whatever the fuck they want it to.
EDIT: You can find the most up to date list of which pharmacies have chosen to restrict their female customers' rights
here, you'll also be able to see which pharmacies are still among the "good guys".
And speaking of the Times, looks like the great journalist jellyfish has finally reared back on its hind tentacles:
Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact...
[...]
...Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
[...]
...The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.
Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.I believe the phrase, "we've turned an important corner" may actually be applicable here as it never has been in Iraq. We may just have gotten at least part of our press back, and it's an almost heart warming thing to see, isn't it?
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