In the eyes of the state Senate Rules Committee, sometimes you’re a miracle worker, sometimes you’re a Nazi medical practitioner.
Fortunately for Michael Hersek, head of California’s Office of the State Public Defender, the Rules Committee classified him as the former Wednesday in confirming his appointment to a second four-year term. Committee Chairman Don Perata, D-Oakland, lavished praise on Hersek for chipping away at a backlog of capital appeals cases despite his office’s loss of 18 attorney positions since 2002.
“We kind of stripped your budget recently, haven’t we? How’s that going?” Perata asked. It’s a challenge, Hersek conceded, adding that his office is trying to slowly replace a retiring, “graying” legal team with “young blood.”
Perata congratulated Hersek “on the work you’re doing” and the committee quickly recommended his confirmation on a 5-0 vote. That stood in stark contrast to the rather rough vetting endured just a few minutes earlier by Jeffrey Thompson, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointee as assistant secretary for health-care policy in California’s prisons. Perata and other committee members were particularly irate after reading an April San Jose Mercury News article that found some women inmates, who don’t have timely access to dental care, have chosen to have all their teeth extracted so they can receive the medical clearance necessary to live in a special housing program with their children.
Perata said the practice was something that would happen in “Nazi Germany.” He also used some choice language to reject Thompson’s measured response and then postponed a vote on the appointee until he reports back on how the teeth-extraction practice started and how he plans to end it.
— Cheryl Miller
You've got to be kidding. This is a bad joke right?
Posted by: Pamb3 | June 12, 2008 at 05:04 PM