Month: March 2006

His only weakness is a listed crime.

“Shoplifters of the World, unite and take over“…After resigning under strange circumstances last month, former Dubya administration domestic advisor Claude Allen is arrested and charged with felony theft — i.e., shoplifting, with approximately 25 counts involving $5000 worth of merchandise.(His particular con — Refund Fraud.) When I first heard the story, I felt kinda bad for Allen — I mean, couldn’t he get on board with Safavian, Federici, and the other Dubya administration crooks and at least make some Casino Jack-levels of swag?

Then I read a little more about him: A former aide to notorious race-baiter and national embarrassment Jesse Helms (No, not yet), Allen accused Helms rival Jim Hunt in 1984 of connections to “‘queers,’ ‘radical feminists,’ socialists, and unions.” (In Senate testimony in 2003, he claimed — under oath — that by “queers” he meant “odd” people.) Moreover, fiercely pro-life and anti-contraceptive, Allen has been one of the administraton’s foremost advocates of promoting abstinence programs as the sole way to combat the spread of AIDS and other STDS. (“In February [of 2003] a hundred CDC researchers on sexually transmitted diseases were summoned to Washington by HHS deputy secretary Claude Allen for a daylong affair consisting entirely of speakers extolling abstinence until marriage. There were no panels or workshops, just endless testimonials, including one by a young woman calling herself ‘a born-again virgin.’“) Well, while we’re preaching, Mr. Allen, can I get a witness for the Eighth Commandment? Update: Dubya reacts.

Duck and Cover.

“‘He has no political capital,’ said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. ‘Slowly but surely it’s been unraveling. There’s been a direct correlation between the trajectory of his approval numbers and the — I don’t want to call it disloyalty — the independence on the part of the Republicans in Congress.‘” In the wake of Dubaigate, Dubya gets more of the “Incredible Shrinking President” treatment from the rest of the GOP. If it quacks like a lameduck… (And, for those of y’all who think I’ll never say anything nice about Dubya, I would have agreed with you until very recently — but I actually think his post-Dubaigate remarks today were on target.)

Sandra Seethes.

“It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.” Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor goes after judge-bashers on the right, quoting very intemperate remarks by Boss DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn. Kudos to her, although, as Ed ranted earlier today, this is all coming a bit late, isn’t it? I mean, where were Justice O’Connor’s concerns about avoiding such ends when she became the swing vote on Bush v. Gore (arguably for dubious personal reasons)? Like her fellow Arizonan John McCain, Justice O’Connor talks nice about standing up to right-wing power-grabs. But, also like McCain, when it was her turn to face them down, she didn’t walk the walk.

Nothing Ever Happens on Mars.

“I think that this mission will re-write the science books on Mars.” More happy space news following the discovery of water on Enceladus: NASA successfully pilots the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into Martian orbit. “It was picture perfect. We could not have planned it any better.” (Phew…looks like everyone successfully converted to metric this time.)

Jack draws First Blood?

Ostensibly to “catch her breath,” Interior Secretary Gail Norton resigns from the Cabinet, effective at the end of the month. Besides opening federal lands for oil drilling whenever possible, Norton’s office also appears to have traded access for bribes from Casino Jack, through aide Italia Federici. “Abramoff boasted in e-mails of having an inside track in Norton’s department. Norton posed for a photograph with Abramoff in her office in 2002.“

Hearing Loss.

“Leave it to Rumsfeld to invoke memories of Vietnam as others in the administration are trying to dispel such comparisons. Leave it to the Senate to miss the slip-up.” In yet another sad example of the AWOL Senate of late, Slate‘s Fred Kaplan watches the Appropriations Committee flub a hearing with Rumsfeld and Rice on Iraq.

Cubism.

“The cubicle was not born evil, or even square. It began, in fact, as a beautiful vision. The year was 1968. Nixon won the presidency. The Beatles released The White Album. And home-furnishings company Herman Miller (Research) in Zeeland, Mich., launched the Action Office. It was the brainchild of Bob Propst, a Coloradan who had joined the company as director of research.” (Propst would later deem his invention “monolithic insanity.”) Fortune‘s Julie Schlosser recounts the ignominious rise of the cubicle as the bane of the American workplace. “The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence.”