Dereliction of Duty

Veterans Administration Secretary James Nicholson (R-Crony) visited my home state of Washington last week. Now a reasonable person like you might assume -- as I did -- that Nicholson, as long as he was in the neighborhood, would manage to find a little time to drop by the VA Center of Excellence for Limb Loss Prevention and Prosthetic Engineering in Seattle, a clinic that is in the forefront of treatment for amputations and such. But maybe not, since Nicholson's boss, Der Monkey Fuehrer, has proposed slashing the VA funding for prosthetic research by $13 billion.

Or that he would manage to sneak in a side trip to the Veterans Hospital at American Lake, south of Tacoma, which specializes in the treatment of PTSD suffered by returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

But no. You would be wrong if you assumed that. Instead Nicholson was here primarily to campaign for a fellow Repugnican and congressional wannabe Doug Roulstone in Washington's 2nd Congressional District.

To be fair, Nicholson did manage to show up for a quick press conference in Walla Walla with Rep Cathy McMorris (R-Moron, up for re-election this year) where he tried to finesse the mostly hostile crowd of veterans concerned about the possible closure of a local VA hospital that serves some 69,000 veterans in Eastern Washington, NE Oregon and Idaho.

Walla Walla was on the chopping block a couple of years ago until Washington's Senator Patty Murray, a longtime friend to veterans, managed to keep it open.

Murray, by the way, was not invited to the press conference. Big surprise there.

Joel Connelly, a columnist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, hit it on the head in his column: "Nicholson's primary constituent group ought to be young veterans undergoing treatment for loss of limbs -- not candidates for Congress," and Nicholson's politically-motivated visit to Washington State amounted to a "dereliction of duty".

Well put, Joel.