The FDA yesterday indicated that Plan B emergency contraception could be available over-the-counter soon, promising to act on a new application from the manufacturer within weeks.

Senator Joe Lieberman, who opposed the availability of emergency contraception, even for rape victims, at hospitals whose beliefs he placed more value on than that of the individual woman seeking emergency contraception, was defeated in the Democratic Primary for a fourth term as a US Senator.

The FDA's reputation as an independent agency serving the best interest of the public has been sullied as it allowed itself to be dragged deeper and deeper into the political morass that allows ideology to replace scientific fact and provable health data.

Lieberman, who received the most popular votes for Vice President in 2000 and came within one vote on the US Supreme Court of having those popular votes count, has similarly been tarnished by that which once made him a thoughtful voice, his moral compass, which seemed to lapse into ideological pandering.

Both the FDA and Lieberman lost their way, caught up in a tide of ideological social conservatism ushered in by Karl Rove and George Bush, beholden to a sliver of the electorate that would dictate morals based on one narrow set of beliefs.

Candidates in November should take heed. Using ideological belief to trump science, public health and common sense all in the name of political expedience, is officially on the wane. And if you are going to talk the talk, even ideologically rigid social conservatives expect you to walk the walk, but it appears Senator George Allen (VA) is taking heat from his right flank for investing in, you guessed it, Barr Laboratories, the maker of Plan B.

You can almost hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth in conservative circles this morning, for if this happened to a Democrat in Connecticut, imagine the wrath incumbent Republicans closely tied to the Bush Ideology will face in November, especially those as obviously hypocritical as Allen. Many incumbents across the nation got a wake-up call in yesterday's primaries.

Lieberman will now try to prove his independence by running as one in November. Allen has a formidible opponent in former Secretary of the Navy James Webb, and this is not shaping up as a year when hypocrisy will be overlooked. The FDA is taking important steps to regain its independence. Voters may have to wait until 2008 to render final judgement on the Bush Administration's ideological folly that eroded the agency's public trust, but its clear that some important shifts are taking place in the body politic already.