AlchemyToday

Here’s K-Lo questioning Tom Ridge’s claimed concern over discussions about raising the terror threat level a few days before the Presidential election in November 2004:

I wasn’t in the room. But how can someone whose title is director of homeland security not resign if he believes the security of the homeland is being compromised in some way by the White House? How do you wait all these years before saying something?

Here’s the second paragraph of the NY Times article that she links in her post:

After Osama bin Laden released a threatening videotape four days before the election, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Mr. Ridge to elevate the public threat posture but he refused, according to the book. Mr. Ridge calls it a “dramatic and inconceivable” event that “proved most troublesome” and reinforced his decision to resign.

He resigned three weeks later.  I don’t know what to say.  As far as not making this public before now, there are two obvious reasons.  First, it would have completely undermined the public’s trust of Bush on national security; Ridge could be very concerned about this but unwilling to cause havoc.  More cynically, he filed it away under “memoirs” to have something to use in the press releases for his book.  My guess is that he was actually quite torn about including this information in the book … normally these sort of gotcha tidbits in memoirs are promoted several weeks ahead of publication to generate interest and orders for books.  It looks like Ridge only agreed at the last minute to publish this, so we’re finding out about it less than two weeks before the book hits the street.

Betsy McCaughey was on the Daily Show last night explaining her contention that the House health bill, HR3200 (PDF here), will lead to people being denied medical treatment against their will at the end of their life because they were forced into making living wills before that moment:

John Stewart does a decent job pointing out that, of course, the bill doesn’t actually do that. But he doesn’t recognize the main lie that McCaughey’s employing here. Here’s the relevant text of the bill:

McCaughey claims that doctors will be penalized if patients don’t adhere to their living wills, and that doctors will force patients to stick to their previous decisions and deny requests for life-sustaining care.  That’s her lie.  ”Adherence to orders for life-sustaining treatment,” refers to adherence by the health care provider, not adherence by the patient to previous plans.  If the patient is able to communicate, they can make their desires known and direct their treatment.  This will still count as adhering to the patient’s will, and doctors will still be credited for doing the right thing.

McCaughy says she’s on the side of doctors, but seems to be willing to assume that doctors are so evil that they’ll pretend they’re not hearing a patient’s call for help as they’re pulling the plug.  This section requires measurement of quality of end-of-life care based on whether doctors do what you asked them to do.  If you are able to ask them to do something else, they have to do that.  If you are unable to direct your own care, doctors will be judged on following the directions you laid out instead of the emotional (and often conflicting) pleas of your family members.  Pretty simple.