*update below
Shoplifting Extremist
by digby
Bush's Domestic Policy advisor, Claude Allen, inexplicably resigned a while back, and today it was revealed that the reason was that he had been arrested for shoplifting. Allen is not just some nobody. He was one of Bush's closest advisors and was paid at the very highest salary level along with Rove and Bartlet and a very few others. He is an extreme social conservative who the Democrats were able to keep off the federal bench when Bush nominated him for a lifetime appointment. (Let's give the Democrats some credit for doing something right on that one.) C. Boyden Gray, the shill in charge of putting far right radicals on the bench wrote this about Allen's nomination in NRO in 2004:
Claude Allen promises not to advance a political agenda from the federal bench he has been nominated to, but to be the type of judge who buttresses the foundation of American government -- by applying the rule of law however he finds it. President Bush, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, could do much worse than Allen. By the grace of democratic principles overriding a minority in the Senate, let us hope they do not have to.
I won't say it.
But here's the real kicker about Allen. From Josh Marshall, back in September 2005
(September 12, 2005 -- 02:10 AM EDT)
Not sure what to make of this small tidbit. But while I was confirming some new entries in our Katrina timeline tonight, I noticed something I hadn't heard before. According to Scott McClellan's August 31st gaggle, in the early days of Katrina, the White House Katrina task force was being run by Claude Allen.
Allen's title at the White House is Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. But he's basically the social policy czar, big into abstinence only education, stem-cell restrictions, stuff like that.
This may simply have been a matter of convening meetings -- I have no idea. But still it seemed an odd choice.
Very odd. In the worst natural disaster in American history the Bush administration's response was assigned to a shoplifting religious extremist and a crony from the arabian horseshow association while the head of homeland security flew off to give a speech. The president and John McCain laughed and ate cake. This is Republican governance.
The administration has known about this for over a month. They lied reflexively and said he had resigned to spend more time with his family. Did they think this wouldn't come out?
Update: Apparently they are still laboring under the illusion that the country will swallow anything:
After the news of Allen's arrest surfaced Friday, White House officials provided an account of their knowledge of the events that led up to it.
The night of Jan. 2, after the alleged incident at the Target in Gaithersburg, he called White House chief of staff Andy Card to inform him of what had happened. The next morning, he spoke again, this time in person, with Card and White House counsel Harriet Miers, assuring them it was all a misunderstanding, press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Allen told his bosses there was merely confusion with his credit card because he had moved several times. "He assured them that he had done nothing wrong and the matter would be cleared up," McClellan said.
Allen told White House officials later that he wanted to resign because the job was too stressful on his family. His last day at the White House was Feb. 17, McClellan said.
The president first learned of Allen's planned departure and the January incident in early February, but since Allen had passed the usual background checks and had no other prior issues that White House officials were aware of, "He was given the benefit of the doubt," McClellan said.
"If it is true, no one would be more shocked and more outraged than the president," McClellan said. Allen has had no contact with the White House since his arrest.
First male prostitutes in the white house press room and now shoplifters in the president's inner circle. The vice president shoots an old man in the face. To say nothing of the indicted and soon to be indicted perjurers and corrupt GOP congressmen and Senators.
These are the people who are asking the nation to trust them with unfettered executive power because they are protecting the country. OK.
.