Wednesday 19 November 2008

Malignant and malicious Bush legacy.

When Bill Clinton completed his second term as president and then vacated the West Wing for his successor and his team, the Republicans reported various acts of 'outrageous' vandalism, such as the letter "W" missing in action, since claiming it had been pried off most of the keyboards in all the offices.

When George "Dubya" Bush leaves, his malignant and malicious legacy will be of a completely different order.

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws. ...

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to "assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity" financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But three officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including its legal counsel, whom President George W. Bush appointed, said the proposal would overturn 40 years of civil rights law prohibiting job discrimination based on religion.

The counsel, Reed Russell, and two Democratic members of the commission, Stuart Ishimaru and Christine Griffin, also said that the rule was unnecessary for the protection of employees and potentially confusing to employers.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already prohibits employment discrimination based on religion, Russell said, and the courts have defined "religion" broadly to include "moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong, which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional
religious views."


Grand merci to TD for alerting us to this recent development.

5 comments:

pogge said...

You neglected to mention that the vandalism of the White House by the Clintons didn't happen.

The White House vandal scandal that wasn't

deBeauxOs said...

Did I claim that the Clintons personally pried off the letter W from keyboards? If some staff prankster did so, it would be typical of the Republicans, livid and quivering with outrage, to launch accusations against them. In my post, I said "reported".

Though that wasn't exactly the point of the blog post.

fern hill said...

That's funny, pogge. Didn't skdadl just say something like that at BnR?

Great minds. . .

pogge said...

I just thought it was worth pointing out since the post didn't comment on the truth of the accusations one way or the other. (And I would add that the incoming Bush administration wouldn't have had to push the story too hard. The Beltway press hated the Clintons and would gladly circulate any story that made them look bad.)

At the time I hadn't visited BnR for quite a while. I was just taking a quick break from work and dropped by.

deBeauxOs said...

In my mind, the hysteria/testerium (in recognition of K.Rove) around the alleged "vandalism" had been amply debunked. Thank you for the link - it is greatly appreciated.

Nonetheless, my point was to use the vapid and vacuous accusations of the incoming Bushites in January 2000 to illustrate how they are currently planning a trash, slash'n' burn retreat with this malevolently declared intention of the current regime.

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