Mar 11, 2006 
Another “I told you so” item —
Via Digby — Sixteen months after President Bush had nominated Claude Alexander Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, conservative C. Boyden Gray blasted Senate Democrats for blocking Allen’s nomination:
Given their paucity of evidence, the Left’s objection cannot really be that Allen’s record suggests he would write his own views into law. The true basis for their opposition is not that he will act to implement his own agenda, but rather — given his traditional values, belief in family, and ideals of personal conservatism — that he might not warmly and enthusiastically embrace theirs. It is their political agenda that drives their animus against not only Claude Allen’s jurisprudence, but against his person — for them there is no difference. …
… 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.
From today’s Washington Post, by Ernesto Londoño and Michael A. Fletcher:
Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush’s top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht’s stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.
Heh. Is Claude Allen’s criminal record one with his “person,” too?
Allen’s appointment to the bench was blocked, but until a month ago he was President Bush’s top domestic policy adviser, with a salary equal to Karl Rove’s. He resigned in February to “spend more time with his family.” I hope his family visits him in the Big House.
Allen was observed shoplifting on January 2, but police were able to determine (from credit card records and surveillance tape) that he’d pulled the same scam on other occasions.
Allen would purchase an item, take it to his car, return to the store, select the same item, take it to the counter and get a refund based on the receipt for the merchandise in his car, Burnett said. “He would get the money back or the credit” on his credit cards.
This guy made $160,000 a year and shoplifted at Target. How pathetic is that?
Allen is a former deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, where he became a strong advocate for abstinence-only AIDS prevention programs. He is a self-described born-again Christian who got his start in politics working for Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. He later worked for the Virginia state attorney general’s office and as state health and human resources secretary. “In that job,” Londoño and Fletcher write, “once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion.”
Allen also ran the White House Katrina task force for a short time immediately after the storm. Josh Marshall noted it had been an “odd choice” — “he’s basically the social policy czar, big into abstinence only education, stem-cell restrictions, stuff like that.” But Allen was also the White House’s highest-ranking African American aide; maybe they thought New Orleans was mostly a “black” problem.
Next time a rightie whines about Dems obstructing President Bush’s court nominees — shove Allen in his face.
