Bribes, Bush and breathless overreactions

The best government money can buy

The Sunday Times of London ran an undercover sting operation involving Stephen Payne, a lobbyist with close connections to the Bush administration. Payne has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Bush’s campaigns over the years and (no doubt in thanks) he was appointed by Bush to the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

In a sting operation that included hidden cameras (watch the video here), Payne clearly tells an interested party that he can arrange a meeting for him with Vice Persident Dick Cheney or Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and maybe even the president himself, if the gentleman will only donate a tidy sum of money to Bush’s prospective presidential library. The tidy sum: $600,000 to $750,000, payable to Payne’s company, out of which he would then donate $250,000 to the Bush library fund. That’s a quick half a million for Payne. And hypothetically, all the access money can buy for the make-believe Asian client seeking an audience with King George.

As an old friend of mine who works as a lobbyist once told me, “As cynical as you are about politics, you aren’t even close.”

Another casualty in the war on personal freedom drugs

The sheriff in Harrison County, Miss., got word that someone was growing pot in a field and he reacted swiftly. He sent a deputy out to look and, sure enough, it looked like pot. They took samples of the plant and sent them to the narcotics division of the Gulfport Police Department. The tests came back negative for THC, the active ingredient in pot, and the head of that narcotics division told the sheriff that it wasn’t marijuana at all. Armed with that knowledge, Barney Fife made an executive decision that more testing was needed. So he did the logical thing: He dug up and seized all 500 plants.

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Turns out they weren’t marijuana at all; they were kenaf. Had the police asked the property owner about it, he could not only have proven it to them, he could have explained that he planted it because deer like it and he owns a hunting business. He could even have shown them the receipt for the $2,000 he paid for the seed to plant the kenaf. But they didn’t ask him; they just destroyed it all. And the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals says the county doesn’t have to reimburse him for any of that damage.

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you. Can we just give this (Barney Fife) sheriff a bullet for his shirt pocket and send him over to Floyd’s?

Free speech? On public property at a campaign event? Surely you jest!

Last week a 61-year-old woman was arrested outside the Denver Center for the Performing Arts before a John McCain town hall meeting that was advertised as being open to the public. She was standing outside the arena peacefully protesting, holding a sign that said “McCain = Bush.” Arena security and police came out and told her she had to leave, and when she refused they arrested her and charged her with trespassing. The security said the Secret Service had ordered them to have her removed.

Turns out that was wrong. The Secret Service issued a statement saying that they ordered no such thing, and it turns out that the order actually came from McCain’s campaign. Yep, that’s the way to prove her wrong, John, by doing exactly what Bush has done routinely for the last eight years — remove anyone who doesn’t like you from your imperial presence. This message was sponsored by the Straight Talk Express.

Don’t you feel safe now?

The ACLU announced this week that the government’s terrorist watch list had grown to over 1 million names. And just in case you’re crazy enough to believe that there actually are a million terrorists in the country, perhaps you should know that the list includes a former assistant attorney general. I feel so much safer knowing that the government has their best people on the job. Who put this list together, Inspector Clouseau?

Arrest that man for kidnapping a piece of bread

All hell broke loose at the University of Central Florida last week when a student attended a Mass on campus and took the Communion Eucharist with him rather than eating it. On a scale of one to 10, this overreaction rates about a 20. At least one person tried to wrestle it away from him. A spokesperson for the local Catholic diocese declared it a “hate crime,” and a local priest compared it to kidnapping a member of one’s family. Seriously. I know you think it actually turns into the body of Christ (actually, most Catholics don’t believe that, much to the consternation of the Church heirarchy), but it’s a piece of bread, people. Get a grip.

Then the story goes from the ridiculous to the surreal when one of my fellow ScienceBloggers, PZ Myers, threatened to commit some unnamed form of sacrilege if someone could get him some consecrated communion wafers. Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League and one of the most absurd blowhards you’ll ever encounter, then demanded that Myers be fired. And just in case that wasn’t overreaction enough, the cherry on top is that Donohue then demanded that the Republican National Committee beef up security at the upcoming national convention because it’s in Minnesota and so is Myers. Over a piece of bread.

It all reminds me of James Madison’s prescient comment about how bizarre otherwise sane people act in groups: “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”