Gosh, they're compassionate over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They just can't stand to see a white guy out of work. Look at Michael Brown. Now there's perhaps another opportunity for more consulting work for the guy who was head of the FDA for two months.

Catherine W. Crawford, the wife of Lester M. Crawford, who resigned abruptly as commissioner of food and drugs last week, said on Monday that he had stepped down voluntarily and "was not fired."
...
Mrs. Crawford said she "knew everything" about her husband of 42 years, adding, "There could not be a more moral, upright person." She rejected suggestions by a government official that her husband had omitted material information from his financial disclosure statements.

She said it was not true that "we had stock that should have been sold quicker."

Dr. Crawford, 67, resigned on Friday, just two months after he was confirmed by the Senate, on July 18. He gave no reason. But a government official said on Friday that the resignation was related to Dr. Crawford's not fully disclosing information about his finances to the Senate.

A senior Republican senator told the White House on Friday that President Bush should cancel his plan to allow the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, to serve simultaneously as acting commissioner of food and drugs.

The senator, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Finance Committee, said that an acting commissioner must be willing to "dedicate 100 percent of his or her time and talent to the nation's public health and safety agency."

Mr. Bush said on Friday that he intended to name Dr. von Eschenbach to the position. Dr. von Eschenbach, a longtime friend of the Bush family, had been executive vice president of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In an interview Saturday, Dr. von Eschenbach said he would keep his job at the cancer institute while running the Food and Drug Administration. He reaffirmed that plan on Monday in a memorandum to outside experts who advise the cancer institute.

Dr. Eschenbach is undoubtedly a qualified physician, but WTF, over? Are there no other qualified men or women who could the job of FDA boss, or is Dr. Eschenbach going to go all Porter Goss on the FDA and start hacking away at the disloyal FDA staffers on behalf of Preznit Nappy Time?

Even Chuck Grassely is starting to break from the party line and is opposing this guy for all the right reasons. FDA is not a part-time job, and running both large organizations is not fair to either of them, however easy it is for Preznit Shrunken Brain to make that decision.