Paging Dr. Frist

My favorite line from the 1992 presidential campaign came when Paul Tsongas labeled Bill Clinton the "pander bear." But Clinton is a paragon of ideological consistency compared to Bill Frist. After diagnosing Terry Schiavo from his Senate office, Frist now has endorsed the teaching of intelligent design (and done so in a classic late-Friday news dump, hoping that the Post and Times somehow won't notice).

Even if Frist didn't want to alienate the religious right by making a science-based argument against ID, he could have offered pragmatic ones--that the US can't afford to fall behind potential competitors like Japan or Korea on high-tech issues; or that there is so little time currently devoted to teaching science in the public schools that we can't rationalize imposing additional requirements.

Clinton overcame the"pander bear" label by (rightly or wrongly) convincing middle-class voters that he had a plan to"grow" the economy. Somehow I doubt the path for Frist will be as easy.

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Earlier this week, I made note of Cindy Sheehan's troubling insinuation that Jewish neoconservatives influenced the President to go to war in Iraq to defend Israel. There no longer seems to be much doubt that she did make such a claim. Sheehan, of course, is entitled to her opinion. But it seems to me that those who brand her testimony on the war"eloquent" might want to reconsider their position.