Honestly. Is there anything Republicans won’t lie about? Anything at all?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist acknowledged Tuesday that he may not have met all the requirements needed to keep his medical license active — even though he gave paperwork to Tennessee officials indicating that he had.

The state of Tennessee requires its licensed physicians to complete 40 hours of continuing medical education every two years. Frist, a heart-lung surgeon who is considering a 2008 presidential run, submitted a license renewal with the Tennessee Health Department stating he has fulfilled that requirement.

Responding Tuesday to repeated requests from The Associated Press, a Frist spokesman said the Republican senator may not have done his continuing education after all [He must have been taking lessons from the same guy who David Addington worked with], and had contacted the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners to see if corrective steps were necessary.

Any doctor will tell you not to spin when you’re lame, but Frist flack Matt Leigh gives it the ol’ college try:

Lehigh indicated that he thought Frist was unaware of a change Tennessee officials enacted in November 2002, which required continuing education for doctors who want to keep active licenses.

Right, like it’s not Frist’s respomsibility to keep up with what it takes to keep his doctor’s license.

(Next time you’re pulled over by the cops, just tell them you haven’t had time to keep up with what it takes to keep your driver’s license, and see how far it gets you.)

So, will Frist be held accountable for lying on application—like anyone else would be?

ennessee law states that doctors who fail to do their continuing medical education “will be subject to disciplinary action.”

Dan Warlick, a Nashville lawyer who represents doctors in trouble with the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, said a case such as Frist’s would likely be taken seriously.

“They have been routinely revoking licenses for physicians who have misrepresented to the board what they have done,” Warlick said.

Or will Frist skate and get away with it, because he’s a powerful Republican?

Let’s wait and see…

NOTE Actually, they should revoke Frist’s license for malpractice—diagnosing Terri Schiavo’s condition from a videotape.

NOTE Why the sobriquet “Hello Kitty”? Not from the icon of Japanese cuteness, that’s for sure. WikiPedia:

While in medical school, Frist obtained cats from animal shelters, under pretense of adoption as pets, for school research experiments in which he killed the animals. In a 1989 autobiography, Frist described how he “spent days and nights on end in the lab, taking the hearts out of cats, dissecting each heart.” After some time, Frist said “[I] lost my supply of cats,” so he chose to deceive animal shelters, an act which he described as “heinous and dishonest.”

Of course, he’s changed now. I mean, it’s not like Frist blew up frogs as a child, or anything. That wouldn’t be heinous—that would be sociopathic. But what is it about Republicans and torture, anyhow? Are they all sick fucks, or only some of them?