A good place to look in you want to keep track of the latest Bush administration scandals and outrages is TPM Muckraker. Today's entry is unique in that I don't recall any prior administration politicizing the position of Surgeon General quite like this.

Yesterday, Richard H. Carmona, U.S. surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the Bush-inflicted horrors he experienced during his tenure. Some of Carmona's experience will be familiar to administration-watchers, like a dismissal of global warming as "a liberal cause" by senior officials. Health and Human Services cronies struck references to stem-cell research from his speeches while instructing him to mention President Bush three times on every page. Come election time, the nation's doctor was to prescribe voting for the GOP ticket.

Other aspects are more inventive, even for President Bush. Consider the case of the Special Olympics:

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”