The previous Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, has been in the news lately (just as the new nominee, Dr. James Holsinger, Jr., prepares for his confirmation hearings), complaining about the marginalization of the office under President Bush:

“The reality is that the nation’s doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas,” said Carmona, who served from 2002 to 2006.

The AP article quoted above quotes Carmona’s accusation as shown, and doesn’t bother pointing out that, while it is true that the Office of the Surgeon General used to be an independent agency with its own budget and has since been integrated into other departments (the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which became the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), that integration didn’t exactly happen under this administration’s watch, but a few years before — in 1953. The supervisors for this department have been political appointees for more than half a century.

You’d think that context might be worth mentioning, since the whole article is about Carmona’s problems with the Bush Administration (which, contrary to what some people might believe, is not responsible for government restructuring in the 1950s). I guess not, though.