What's going on with Bill Frist?

You would think that an education at the bastions of the liberal elite would help educate someone. But here is what Frank Rich has to say about tonight's "Justice Sunday" broadcast and Bill Frist, who is scheduled to appear on it.

The fraudulence of "Justice Sunday" begins but does not end with its sham claims to solidarity with the civil rights movement of [the 60s]. "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias," says the flier for tonight's show, "and now it is being used against people of faith." In truth, Bush judicial nominees have been approved in exactly the same numbers as were Clinton second-term nominees. Of the 13 federal appeals courts, 10 already have a majority of Republican appointees. So does the Supreme Court. It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the "left's last legislative body," and that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is the poster child for "outrageous" judicial overreach. Our courts are as highly populated by Republicans as the other two branches of government.

The "Justice Sunday" mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. The real "Justice Sunday" agenda lies elsewhere. As Bill Maher summed it up for Jay Leno on the "Tonight" show last week: " 'Activist judges' is a code word for gay." The judges being verbally tarred and feathered are those who have decriminalized gay sex (in a Supreme Court decision written by Justice Kennedy) as they once did abortion and who countenance marriage rights for same-sex couples. This is the animus that dares not speak its name tonight. …

Once upon a time you might have wondered what Senator Frist is doing lighting matches in this tinderbox. As he never ceases to remind us, he is a doctor … with an admirable history of combating AIDS in Africa. But this guy signed his pact with the devil even before he decided to grandstand in the Schiavo case by besmirching the diagnoses of neurologists who, unlike him, had actually examined the patient.

It was three months earlier, on the Dec. 5, 2004, edition of ABC News's 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos,' that Dr. Frist enlisted in the ["Justice Sunday"] cavalry. That week Bush administration abstinence-only sex education programs had been caught spreading bogus information, including the canard that tears and sweat can transmit H.I.V. and AIDS — a fiction that does nothing to further public health but is very effective at provoking the demonization of gay men and any other high-risk group for the disease. Asked if he believed this junk science was true, the Princeton-and-Harvard-educated Dr. Frist said, 'I don't know.' After Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed him three more times, this fine doctor theorized that it 'would be very hard' for tears and sweat to spread AIDS (still a sleazy answer, since there have been no such cases).

The obvious cynical explanation is that Frist is running for President in 2008 and that he wants to take over Bush's base of God-fearers. Can a Harvard and Princeton educated MD be that intellectually dishonest? Perhaps so.