Rhthym Is Gonna Get You

Total insanity indicator of the day courtesy of the Washington Post: President Bush has appointed Susan Orr, who is opposed to contraception, to be the chief of family planning programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Orr has worked at the James Dobson–funded Family Research Council and didn't drop dead from shame after letting the phrase "Fertility is not a disease" pass her lips in public.

The birth czar does not approve contraception. How does that even work? She's going to tell the whole nation . . . to use the rhythm method? Hunt stork? Her predecessor, Eric Keroack, also came to his anti-woman positions during a long career working in religious practices more in sadness than in anger after reviewing the science. At least Keroack's sharing his conclusions with the rest of us. Amanda Schaffer writes in Slate that Keroack holds to the belief (which he might have lifted from Alexyss Tylor) that "premarital sex disrupts brain chemistry so as to create a physiological barrier to happy marriage." Now there's a disease.