Y’know, sometimes you want the bad guys to live. Just so they can go through trial if nothing else. Yes, the world is a slightly better place with him dead, but it would be an even slightly betterer [sic, even though I wrote it] place if he’d died just after the trial.
But you can’t have everything.
Speaking of not having everything, how is it that Claude Allen, President Bush’s Domestic Policy Advisor, was nailed over two months ago for a long-term fraud racket, and I didn’t hear about it until this morning? I mean, I don’t keep my head in the sand, I read the news, I get assloads of e-mail from PFAW and MoveOn… How come I never heard about this? DoubleYewTeeEff?
Detectives from the Montgomery County Police Retail Theft Unit arrested a man yesterday for a continuing retail theft scheme.
Claude Alexander Allen, age 45, of the 7200 block of Cliff Pine Drive in Gaithersburg, was charged with theft scheme over $500 and theft over $500. He was released on his own recognizance.
On January 2, 2006, a Target store Loss Prevention Manger observed an unknown man enter the store located at 25 Grand Corner Avenue in Gaithersburg. He was observed in the store with an empty Target bag in a shopping cart. The man was then seen selecting merchandise throughout the store and placing items in the Target bag. He put additional items in his cart. The man then went to guest services where he produced a receipt and received a refund for the items he had just selected from the store shelves. After receiving the refund he left the store without paying for the additional merchandise in the shopping cart. He was apprehended by the store employee.
The Target Loss Prevention Manger contacted Montgomery County Police and through the police investigation it was learned that Allen had been receiving refunds in an amount exceeding $5,000 during last year. Some of the fraudulent returns were made at Target stores and some at Hecht’s stores. He would buy items, take them out to his car, and return to the store with the receipt. He would select the same items he had just purchased, and then return them for a refund. Allen is known to have conducted approximately 25 of these types of refunds, having the money credited to his credit cards.
Throughout 2005 he obtained refunds for items ranging from clothing, a Bose theater system, stereo equipment, and photo printer to items valued only at $2.50.
Allen resigned, without press comment, in February. His last day at work was the 17th. But his “apprehension” by a Target employee came way before Dick Cheney blasted a pal in the face while hunting farm-raised quail that had never spent a single day in the wild until being carried in cages to the brush so they could be released and shot by Republicans. So you can’t blame the media’s failure to report this on the “VP shoots a guy” incident clouding the airwaves.
Damn. Clinton couldn’t have a 3rd assistant to the 4th assistant quit without setting off alarms. How much more evidence do we need to prove the so-called “liberal media” is a right-wing bogey-man myth?
I mean, having a gay male prostitute in the press room masquerading as a journalist so the Prez could depend on a “friendly reporter” to further his agenda… I can almost sorta see how that incident could get “lost” because maybe the press doesn’t want to investigate just how easily “the press” is compromised by the Karl Roves of this world.
But why wasn’t Claude Allen’s fraud incident all over Google news, Yahoo front pages, and MSN? Why didn’t I get a ridiculously outraged e-mail from MoveOn? How did this disappear until formal charges were brought? It’s such a big deal when Winona Ryder does it once, but when Bush’s Domestic Policy Advisor is arrested for a year-long racket, it slips under the radar for over two months? The 5 grand total of this fraud is a bit trivial as a dollar amount (well, it’s a lot by my standards but not compared to the 2.3 trillion Rumsfeld admits the Pentagon can’t account for), but the apparent psychosis that would cause such a successful man to commit such petty fraud is a powerful metaphor for this administration, just as the Cheney incident translates quite smoothly into the metaphorical “don’t aim, just shoot, what did I kill?” mentality of our current regime.
And these are the guys insisting we should hand them unfettered executive power because they know best how to protect us…
Isn’t that what Slobodan asked for, and got, in his hey-day?
