One Tempest, One Teapot

Thanks to Mal of The Malcontent, I was informed of the latest kerfuffle over government websites.

While Mal does make a good point about how this looks like scrubbing information, I will reproduce what I think are the salient points from the Family Research Council's letter on the issue.


We've reported to you on the homosexual website at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). When some of you wrote to HHS to criticize this misuse of taxpayer dollars, you received anonymous, abusive, and even threatening responses. I protested this vigorously in a letter to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. Recently, I received a call from Rick Campanelli, legal counsel to Leavitt. He acknowledged that the website had been taken down and that the unidentified contractor employee responsible for the abusive replies had been fired. That's fine--as far as that goes. But Mr. Campanelli did not explain how HHS became involved in promoting the unhealthy homosexual lifestyle in the first place. We had pointed out the medical inaccuracies that were promoted by the website. Nor did Mr. Campanelli explain to me how HHS could allow a contractor to speak for the largest federal department on such a vital matter. To be fair, many of the replies received to your expressions of concern were civil and respectful--if noncommittal.


Fair question. The FRC may be bigots, but they're still voters and taxpayers, and they have the right to request that information and that it be communicated to them in a respectful fashion. It is absolutely not acceptable for a Federal contractor to reply in the fashion that they apparently did. Before any information is restored to that website, an answer better than "we fired the offending employee" is necessary.

Why? Because the FRC wouldn't do it for us, and we are better than they are. The only way to expose them as the asses they are is in comparison to us.