Claud Allen arrested on theft charges....Washington Post

[Skidmore]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031002328.html?nav=rss_email/components

Former Top Bush Aide Accused of Md. Thefts
Refund Scam Netted $5,000, Police Say

By Ernesto Londoño and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 11, 2006; Page A01

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.

Allen, 45, of Gaithersburg, has been released on his own recognizance and is awaiting trial on two charges, felony theft scheme and theft over $500, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a police spokesman. Each charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison....

Allen, a former deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, was nominated in 2003 to a federal appeals court seat. He was appointed the president's top domestic policy adviser last year at the start of Bush's second term. That made him the highest-ranking African American on the White House staff.

[darkmaestro019]

1. WTF? What kind of sense does this make?

Dude, I'm broker than broke and I have, questionable, morals, in some ways, but it seems to me that if you're BUSH'S FKING AIDE you make enough money not to NEED the silly embarassing risk of refund fraud. Why in the fk would he do this? I could even vaguely understand the ha-ha thrill of shoplifting, but this is just silliness. Makes no sense to me at all.

[Ian David]

4. It was the only way he could get fired short of drowning a city

If he'd tried to quit, Bush would have arranged to either have him shot in the face, or meet with some "accident."

If the Freepers start geting racist about it being a being a black guy, remind them about the white trash mayor in Apalachia charged with buying votes with beer, cigarettes and pork rinds.

[FSogol]

7. Answer: GOP Culture of Corruption

His only mistake was stealing $5,000 instead of a $5,000,000 scam involving taxpayer money.

[KharmaTrain]

2. We'll Need To Raise Taxes To Pay For More Club Feds

By the time this regime is finally removed the list of felons could overwhelm the judicial system and require the building of dozen of new federal prisons to hold all these crooks.

When I heard this story this morning I said, "WTF"...here's a guy whose gotta be bringing down a pretty nice salary, can expense transportation or food or other goods and has a big government job and he's trying to scam Target or $2.50??? Ontop of that, the dude lied to keep his job for another month (of course the White House didn't bother to investigate this); knowing that this story would eventuall come out (you can't keep a police record totally private) and "assisted in writing the State Of The Union". Ahh...sleep tight America...the "grown-ups" are in charge.

:puke:

[NashVegas]

3. Frame It: Bush's Top Domestic Policy Advisor Was Caught SHOPLIFTING

What a wonderful symbol!

[Missy M]

5. I guess being "Born Again" doesn't apply to being a......

petty thief. Why would you do something so stupid as a refund scam when you have such a good life. Greed comes in many forms.

[Divernan]

6. He kept Medicaid funds from impoverished rape victim who wanted abortion

This guy is a posterboy for GOP immorality. Read the whole 2 page Post article. He started out working for Jesse Helms and bashing gays. He had pulled this refund scam 25 other times at that store alone, before he was finally caught. AND he sat in Laura Bush's box at the State of the Union speech! ! !

[RC]

8. Is this not terrorism against Target?

Invoke the Patriot act. Let Amerika see what the Patriot Act really involves. $5000? With what he made? That is like $50 to me. Not worth the cost if caught.

[Hubert Flottz]

9. K&R

SAY IT LOUD!

[jesus_of_suburbia]

10. Allen hates the "queers" too!

Allen is a self-described born-again Christian who got his start in politics working for Jesse Helms (R), the conservative former North Carolina senator.

Allen stirred controversy as Helms's campaign spokesman in 1984 by telling a reporter that then-Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. -- Helms's opponent -- was politically vulnerable because of his links to the "queers." He later explained that he used the word not to denigrate anyone but as a synonym for "odd and unusual."



A--Hole!

[susu369]

11. More information from Doug Ireland's blog about Allen

Another Bush 'Family Values' Hypocrite: CLAUDE ALLEN ARRESTED FOR THEFT AND FRAUD
Former Bush domestic policy czar Claude Allen (right) has been arrested in Maryland on charges of swindling at least $5000 out of Targets and Hecht's stores in a refund scam, the Washington Post reports this morning. When Allen was named by Bush as his White House domestic counselor a year ago, I wrote a profile of Allen for the L.A. Weekly detailing how Allen was "a notorious homophobe, a ferocious enemy of abortion and an opponent of safe-sex education who for years has been one of the AIDS community’s principal enemies," and explaining why his appointment was was "a huge victory for the social reactionaries of the Christian right."

To take just one example from Allen's repulsive resume, when he was Deputy Secretary of HHS: "Known as Karl Rove’s enforcer Allen wielded a heavy, censorious and punitive hand at HHS. In November 2001, Thompson loyally toed the Rove-Bush line when he put Allen in charge of supervising HHS’s audit of HIV-prevention spending. Allen led an HHS witch-hunt that investigated all of the AIDS service organizations (ASOs) receiving any federal funding (like New York City’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis) whose staff members had disrupted Tommy Thompson’s speech to the 14th Annual International AIDS Conference in Barcelona; they were there to protest Bush’s lethal do-nothingism about the AIDS pandemic. These audits were designed to intimidate ASOs into abandoning AIDS advocacy. A number of ASOs, like San Francisco’s Stop AIDS Project and half a dozen other California AIDS-fighting groups, were ultimately purged from receiving U.S. funding by the Allen-led witch-hunt because Allen didn’t like their science-based sex-education programs. Allen ordered Advocates for Youth, the leading national coalition for safe-sex ed, audited half a dozen times...." There's a lot more in my L.A. Weekly profile of Claude Allen, which you can read in its entirety by clicking here. (Left, Claude Allen's police mugshot accompanying the report of his arrest on the website of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Police Department's website.)

The New York Times report this morning on Allen's arrest this past Thursday says that the White House knew of Allen's legal problems in January, but kept him on to work on the State of the Union address. In the sanitized chronology provided by White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, as relayed by the Times:

"On Jan. 3, Mr. Allen discussed the incident with Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, and told her that he had been returning merchandise and there was confusion with his credit cards because he had moved many times. He assured Ms. Miers that the matter would be cleared up.Mr. McClellan said the White House gave Mr. Allen "the benefit of the doubt" because he had gone through extensive background checks before his judicial nomination.Within a few days of the incident, Mr. McClellan said, Mr. Allen told Mr. Card and Ms. Miers that he was thinking of leaving the White House to spend time with his family. But Mr. Allen decided to stay for a while because he was working on domestic initiatives for the State of the Union address, which Mr. Bush delivered on Jan. 31."

==full article link:==

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/03/anothr_bush_fam.html

[tinfoilinfor2005]

12. Interesting article.

The man is quite an entrepreneur. Or may Manure is a better word.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

13. "Or may Manure is a better word."

"Or may Manure is a better word."

LOL! I think you are right.

[me b zola]

14. Greed is the #1 republican value

Maybe Allen just felt the need to rip somebody off so that he would feel like he fit in with the rest of them in the WH.