“In a private letter to Sen. Bill Frist, 31 of the 165 members of his Harvard Medical School class of 1978 accused him of using his medical degree improperly,” reports Newsweek’s Howard Fineman. More below:
Reports Raw Story:
Frist’s office declined comment; according to public records, at least 13 of the 31 classmates had donated money to Democrats in the past five years. Still, Dr. Lewis Rose, an oncologist who said he voted for President George W. Bush last year, insists Frist had overstepped. “He had no right to use the cloak of the Hippocratic oath, no matter who was right,” Rose tells Newsweek. “He’s got medical training and a medical perspective, but he is not a practicing physician and has no business using that in politics. Period. If he does, he won’t get any of his classmates’ votes who signed this.”
In his profile of Frist, which appears in the April 25 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 18), Fineman reports that even some Bible-belt Republicans were troubled by Frist’s planned involvement in a nationally televised prayer service to be held at a megachurch in Louisville next Sunday. …
The sponsoring Family Research Council’s flame-throwing message-filibusters are anti-Christian-predictably infuriated Democrats. And Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Newsweek, “Questioning a senator’s motives in that way is a very dangerous precedent. That goes to a level where the Senate has never gone before. It is a very unhealthy turn of events.”
WTG, Sen. Graham.
Well, we know how far such letters — as fine as they are — go in politics. Remember the letter from past admirals and generals in support of Kerry? Or the letters from past diplomats opposing Bolton? And on and on …
What’s really going to help, I think, is if members of the GOP — like Graham — stops Frist.
Now, I’m not a student of Graham. I’ve heard him say some very astute things, and ask some very tough questions, on CSPAN. So, he’s earned some respect from me for his brains and his guts. But, will he grab this bull by its horns? Is that also in his character?
My hope is that Frist and the others on the far right who have decided to put all their coins in the right/fundamentalist basket find that they have completely mis-read the American people.
I don’t think we are a particularly fundamentalist society.
The revulsion shown at the abuse of Terri Schaivo at the hands of right-wing politicians and zealots (in Congress and in churches) has not yet made an impact on the political strategists of the right.
I hope it doesn’t–not until it is too late and they have destroyed their own movement.
Yeah. Let them pay for their sins!
This just proves that Frist can wear two dunce hats, one for being a doctor who thinks tears can transmit aids or devine someone’s medical condition from a video or become a quasi senator/preacher at this whole Injustice Sunday being planned.
What I am wondering is how the networks are going to cover this bullshit? I don’t have a lot of hope that they’ll treat it like the scary theocratic grab that it is.
Most politicians take their talking heads to network and cable TV on Sunday morning.
This guy’s gonna make a video appearance in church.
Considering he’s a former surgeon, present politician, and presidential wannabe, I think he deserves a real descriptive nickname to “frame” him!
Praying Mantis is mine. Anyone who wants to PhotoShop his head on the insect’s body has my blessing. Add another specimen to the list of Bug-Lites that the Republicans are.
the person quoted, Lew Rose, is Haverford ’74 (I finally graduated in ’73), and I actually knew him fairly well at one point.