Frist officially loses all moral authority

November 10, 2005

This week, Bill Frist clearly suggested he was less concerned about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe, than media reports about the facilities. This afternoon, Frist stopped suggesting and made it explicitly clear.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves.

Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is “not concerned about what goes on” behind the prison walls. […]

Frist was asked if that meant he was not concerned about investigating what goes on in detention centers.

“I am not concerned about what goes on and I’m not going to comment about the nature of that,” Frist replied.

As Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) put it earlier this week: “Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails.” Not for Frist, who’s “not concerned” about U.S.-run gulags in eastern Europe.

I hope Frist didn’t expect to have any moral authority for the rest of tenure in public life; whatever standing he may have had before is gone.

How much moral authority does one retain after going to the pound, adopting a cat and then taking it home and killing it?

  • i can’t say that i had a particularly clear image of frist before he became the majority leader, but was he always this stupid? or has he simply been peter princpled, and he was merely a typical hack right-wing senator as one of 100, but when put in a position of authority, his true shallowness comes out?

  • but was he always this stupid?

    Afraid so. Frist coasted a while on a good reputation as a doctor, but became majority leader after Bush turned on Lott and knew Frist would be a “good soldier”.

    Here’s my thought: can we now stop this “Frist ’08” silliness? It ain’t happening.

  • wait, why is graham saying the real story is those jails and then putting an amendment in the defense appropriations bill to allow that type of thing to continue?

  • Here’s my thought: can we now stop this “Frist ’08” silliness? It ain’t happening.

    Why stop it? Frist makes the Repugnicans look as bad as they are. Voters need to see that.

  • And this guy’s a doctor?

    With all his training, and all
    he knows about human
    suffering, physical pain, mental
    anguish, sickness and
    disability, and he doesn’t
    care what goes on in those
    gulags?

    This guy is disgusting, beneath
    contempt.

  • Well, no suprise there. Frist continues to demonstate how big a political hack he is. After this blows over, will anyone take him seriously?

  • Just a few years ago, Frist was riding high because Princeton dedicated a new campus center for the Frist family (Bill, brother Tom, and some of their kids are listed on the plaque). That was then quickly followed by his rise to the Senate Majority post. Now, his name is absolute mud.

  • Really, though: democracy and morality are so — you know — over.

    I mean it’s really all about money and power. We used to have to pretend democracy was a good thing but I know and you know (I surely do hope) that the really useful thing is to just go out there and take what you want.

    Do your thing. That’s all that matters in the end.

  • Thanks Hark. Frist is such an overwhelmingly offensive partisan slimeball that it’s hard to remember that he is, by some long stretch of imagination, supposed to be a healer as well. The Schiavo thing, with his remote, positive diagnosis of her potential functionality, was such creeped out theater that the concept of real medicine being involved never crossed my mind.

    The guy’s moral compass must be just spinning. How do you get back to earth from where this asshole is orbiting? He’s lost and gaining altitude. Hasta la vista Frist-wit.

  • Senator Kittenkiller who diagnosed Terri Schiavo hundreds of miles away and who is being investigated for insider trading has no shame. I hope he runs in 2008 and that the GOP takes him seriously as a candidate– we could have a field day with him.

  • Y’all, Frist was not a *doctor*, he was a *surgeon* – who have long held reputations as the cowboys of the medical profession. The values traditionally associated with healing, listed upthread, have not (traditionally) been part of surgeons’ self-identity. There’s a fairly well-developed literature in medical sociology on this. All this is just a long way of saying that despite our warm and fuzzy feelings about doctors, the man is actually behaving in character.

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