On Monday, the federal office that oversees the nation’s family-planning program got a new boss who doesn’t believe in birth control. Eric Keroack is a Massachusetts obstetrician-gynecologist who argues that abstinence until marriage is the only healthy choice for women. Until recently, he served as medical director of a pregnancy-counseling organization that runs down contraception and gives out scientifically false health information—for instance, that condoms “offer virtually no protection” against herpes or HPV. Keroack also promotes a wacky piece of pseudoscience: the claim that premarital sex disrupts brain chemistry so as to create a physiological barrier to happy marriage.

Here’s the whole story at Slate Magazine online:

http://www.slate.com/id/2154249/?nav=tap3

One of the reasons Iraq is so FUBAR today is that the Bush administration sent in a bunch of ideological neo-conservative true believers right after the fall of Saddam, rejecting people with actual experience and expertise in rebuilding war torn countries.  Second only to that, what this administration has done in the domestic arena, especially in the science areas of the EPA and FDA where ideology trumps logic and facts for the Bushies, is a staggering blight on our civic life.  I believe history will look back and judge “W” as one of the worst presidents America has ever suffered and this appointment is one piece of evidence supporting that view.