Politics

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was named Speaker of the House to replace Tom DeLay. It’s already been pointed out that he lives in a D.C. apartment that belongs to a lobbyist. The Center for Public Integrity has looked further at his record, and found that he has taken dozens of trips on private jets owned by corporations that have legislative interests before Congresshas accepted scores of privately sponsored trips (often categorized as having fact-finding or educational purposes) to some of the world’s premier golf spots and foreign localeshas hosted many high-end fund-raisers to wine and dine potential donors and Republican colleagueshas donated millions of dollars to election campaigns of fellow Republicans.All legal, but the first two items are equivalent to receiving substantial gifts from special interests, and the second two are equivalent to passing some of them on and seeking more. The CPI’s website also has a Google Map of Boehner’s trips and expenses for 2005 which includes a Scottsdale, Arizona connection–he spent thousands of dollars at the Talking Stick Golf Club at 9998 E. Indian Bend Rd: DateAmount02/13/2004$3805.1302/13/2004$469.1302/13/2004$938.2603/07/2005$7488.67

I don’t know how they got my email address–I’ve never been (and never will be) a registered Republican. From: “Chairman Matt Salmon” [email protected] To: [my email address] Subject: Arizona Republican Party Roundup - March 15, 2006 Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:53:37 -0600 Attention Republican Clubs and Organizations - Submit your events to [email protected] In This Issue: Chairman Salmon on the Death of State Senator Marilyn Jarrett Capitol Update Kyl Immigration Provisions Moving Forward … Paid for by the Arizona Republican Party (602) 957-7770 Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. —————————————- This email was sent by: Republican Party of Arizona 3501 N 24th Street Phoenix, AZ, 85016, USA/[email protected] actual email came from ExactTarget.com, whose anti-spam policy says: Anti-SPAM at ExactTarget ExactTarget believes, practices, and requires its clients to practice only permission-based e-mail marketing. Our clients certify that they will use our software only to send e-mails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to receive their e-mail. They are forbidden to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) via our system. ...

Claude Allen, who was up February 9 the White House domestic policy advisor, advocating abstinence education, school prayer, and opposition to abortion, was arrested this week in Maryland for a retail fraud scheme. Allen, who was previously a deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, would purchase items at Target or Hecht’s, take them out to his car, return with the receipts and take an identical item off the shelf and “return” it for a credit back to his credit card. He apparently did this more than 25 times between October 29, 2005 and January 2, 2006, defrauding the stores of more than $5,000. This from a guy who was making $160,000 a year. His attorney says it’s just a misunderstanding. (From Talking Points Memo.) UPDATE (March 14, 2006): Claude Allen has an evil twin. No, really! UPDATE 2 (March 14, 2006): But the twin wasn’t the one who admitted the scam.

The Arizona Republic reports today that a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills on behalf of Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an anti-psychiatry group. Several of them have taken trips to Scientology events at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles to meet with John Travolta. The CCHR and Scientology have a religiously-based opposition to psychiatry and medicine pertaining to mental health. This derives from L. Ron Hubbard’s own opposition to psychiatry and his development of Dianetics as an alternative to psychological therapy. When he created Scientology (after having temporarily lost control of his Dianetics organization to his partner Don Purcell of Wichita, Kansas), he adopted the trappings of religion and invented a cosmology involving evil intergalactic psychiatrists who assisted the warlord Xenu in order to eliminate those who opposed him. They did this by injecting billions of people with alcohol and glycol, loading them onto space planes that looked just like DC-8s, and flying them to planet Teegeeack (Earth), where they were dumped into volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls (or “thetans”) departed their bodies and are still here, attached to our own souls and causing all manner of psychological ills for us. Psychiatry and psychology, according to Scientology, are bogus methods which do nothing to address the real problems caused by these “body thetans” attached to us–only the Scientology process of auditing with an e-meter can free us from them. (You can find more details about Scientology’s cosmology at Wikipedia, which has a very comprehensive set of articles about the religion, as well as at Operation Clambake. I also highly recommend Russell Miller’s book about L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, which is online in its entirety.) So who are the Arizona legislators working with CCHR and attending Scientology functions? Sen. Karen Johnson (R-District 18, Mesa). Karen Johnson is on the Family Services, Finance, Appropriations, and K-12 Education committees. She is one of the nuttier fundamentalists in the legislature, a member of Concerned Women for America and in tight with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council. Johnson has gone so far as to lend her name to the CCHR’s Advisory Board. Sen. Linda Gray (R-Glendale, District 10), who is on the K-12 Education, Higher Education, Government, and Family Services committees and is a big supporter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She has degrees in recreation administration and sociology. Sen. Carolyn Allen (R-District 8, Scottsdale), who is on the Commerce and Economic Development, Health, and Transportation committees. Sen. Marilyn Jarrett (R-District 19, Mesa). She just died on Friday after having a stroke in her office on Thursday. Sen. Albert Hale (D-District 2, Window Rock). Former president of the Navajo Nation, on the Government Accountability and Reform, Government, and Higher Education committees. Rep. Tom Prezelski (D-District 29, Tucson). On the Counties, Municipalities, and Military Affairs, Federal Mandates and Property Rights, and Transportation committees. Rep. Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem). A member of “Pure Heart Christian Fellowship,” the Arizona Women’s Shooting Association (she holds a concealed carry permit), and Concerned Women for America. She’s on the Appropriations, Transportation, and Ways and Means committees. Rep. Russell Pearce (R-District 18, Mesa). A pro-lifer and strong advocate of English-only and against illegal immigration. Sen. Thayer Verschoor (R-District 22, Gilbert). On the Family Services, Government Accountability and Reform, Higher Education, and Transportation committees. Verschoor is the guy who introduced a bill to require state universities to “provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive” where “a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.” He didn’t introduce this over the issue of evolution, but because of the book The Ice Storm, which features a 1970s “key party.” He missed the point that it was not portrayed in a favorable way. Rep. Lucy Mason (R, District 1, Prescott). She’s on the Appropriations, Natural Resources and Agriculture, and Universities, Community Colleges and Technology committees. Kudos to Sen. Robert Cannell (D-District 24, Yuma), the only M.D. in the state legislature, for calling them on this. Any legislator dumb enough enough to promote bills based on Scientology advocacy and pseudoscience is unfit for public office and should be voted out at the earliest opportunity. (By the way, this doesn’t mean that every position the CCHR advocates is wrong–but when they’re right it’s generally not for the right reasons, and they are completely unreliable on the science.) (My previous blog entry on Scientology recounted my experiences interacting with the church when it decided to declare war on the Internet, and an earlier one reported on the updated “Space opera in Scientology” Wikipedia entry.) ...

From TPM Muckraker: The Bush administration has appointed 28-year-old Douglas Hoelscher to be executive director for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, an amalgam of 20 panels of outside experts and officials who advise the administration on homeland security matters. Hoelscher is said to have no management experience. He came to the White House in 2001 as a $30,000-a-year scheduler. And more at Effect Measure: Suppose you are a young 28 year old with no management experience but, according to your Friendster.com profile a good listener and someone whose favorite books include William Bennett’s The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. You aren’t entirely inexperienced. In 2001 you were a $30,000 a year low level White House staffer who arranged presidential travel. Not enough for you? How about a top level job in the Department of Homeland Security? That can be arranged. Welcome Douglas Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Commitees (plural). Hoelscher is now the “primary representative” of department Secretary Michael Chertoff in dealing with more than 20 advisory boards. Among them is the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes such high-powered figures as Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Lockheed Chairman Norman Augustine, and former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger. (Shane Harris in the National Journal)(Via Tara Smith at Aetiology.)

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was previously pointed out exchanging donations to his charity for government contracts, now denies that the charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is his. Sure, he founded it, but he says (in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) that he’s had nothing to do with it since then: I do not have a personal charity. The reference was an allusion to Operation Good Neighbor, a charitable organization that I founded in 2000. Since then, I have had no control over its direction. My involvement is limited to being honorary chairman of the board – a board that includes former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode, a prominent Democrat – and lending my name to fund-raising events. That’s it.Attytood shows, with quotes and photos, that Santorum’s a liar. Also in today’s news is that Barbara Bonfiglio, former treasurer of political action committees for the indicted Sen. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Santorum, and convicted former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), has resigned from the D.C. law firm of Williams & Jensen and from her post as treasurer of dirty politician Rep. Rich Pombo (R-CA)’s political action committee. Her lawfirm bio says “She also advises the firm’s clients on matters involving House and Senate ethics rules, as well as compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act.” She was treasurer of Santorum’s charity, Operation Good Neighbor. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Santorum lied when he said he would stop regular meetings with lobbyists: After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.(Via Talking Points Memo and TPM’s Daily Muck.) UPDATE: At least three lobbyists have been working at Santorum’s charity–in addition to Barbara Bonfiglio, mentioned above, lobbyist Rob Bickhart, whose offices are also the home of Santorum’s PAC and re-election campaign, works for the charity. And the charity is spending as much as 60% of its money on non-charitable things, like $200,000 for travel expenses and meetings. Santorum’s response, when asked about this, was to deny that Bickhart is a lobbyist.

George W. Bush has issued an executive order creating “a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.” The Center will be run by a Director appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The original Director of WHOFBCI, John DiIulio, who blasted the Bush administration in Esquire magazine in 2002 and then quickly attempted to retract his criticisms. Once again, reality matches The Onion. (UPDATE: This is apparently primarily focused on disaster recovery efforts–but it still seems quite wrong for the government to engage religious organizations via contract or grant to aid in disaster recovery efforts, when these are voluntary charitable organizations. It not only involves taking from the general public to support a particular religious viewpoint, it turns a voluntary charity into a taxpayer-supported service.)

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) says that Jack Abramoff never influenced him, but Abramoff says in Vanity Fair that he got everything he ever asked for from Burns: “Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns’ committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures [Abramoff’s restaurant] as their cafeteria."Burns’ former staffers have also made millions from going to work for telecom and tech firms that have received funding from Burns earmarks.

That’s a picture of me on September 9, 1995 in front of the Church of Scientology in Mesa, Arizona, picketing about the “Cancel poodle” (better known as the “Cancel Bunny”). This was about two years into Scientology’s war on the Internet, which, despite a few Pyrrhic victories in court, was characterized by huge losses on the part of Scientology in the court of public opinion. Shortly after this, Jeff Jacobsen and I published an article on the subject in Skeptic magazine, titled “Scientology v. the Internet," for which I received the Skeptics Society’s Martin Gardner award for “Best Skeptical Critic” in 1996. This article was one of the few published that went into detail about the Tom Klemesrud/“Miss Blood” affair and its relation to why Scientology was so insistent to compromise the anonymity of a user of Julf Helsingius’ Penet anonymizing remailer service in Finland. Some of these facts which are still not widely known, as seen by the Wikipedia entry on Penet. Scientology’s search for the user seemed to have stopped at Caltech, but they did find that the account holder was a Caltech alumnus who had been working for Scientology, and had accurately leaked Scientology internal documents in his own attempt to support Scientology’s position on the Klemesrud case. This article was responded to in the pages of Skeptic by Leisa Goodman, which the Skeptics Society decided was a good place to stop the discussion. My response to Goodman, available only on my website, updates the story to early 1996. This article is much less known than the original. Skeptic also published a letter from Linda Woolard. In May 1995, I put up a web page about Scientology’s private investigators. Initially this was to document photos of private investigators which Scientology had hired and sent from Los Angeles to Phoenix to take photographs of those of us who were picketing the Mesa Church of Scientology. It later was expanded to document some of the activities of former LAPD officer Eugene Ingram, who was a very active and sleazy PI for Scientology at the time. He was kicked off the force after allegations of his involvement with drug dealers and a prostitution ring, and was compensated very well by Scientology to intimidate critics. Jeff Jacobsen dug up some outstanding warrants for his arrest in Florida and Oklahoma (for impersonating a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon, respectively) which led to his Arizona PI license not being renewed. He doesn’t seem to have been active in recent years. I then added some photos of some California PIs who were hired to follow a German TV producer who was doing a program critical of Scientology. In 1999, I received two Digital Millenium Copyright Act notices from Scientology–one was regarding a customer of Frontier GlobalCenter, the company I worked for at the time, and the other was regarding my own website. The first was a website run by “xenubat” (Susan Mullaney) which contained some great audio file samples of L. Ron Hubbard speeches, saying absurd things. Under the DMCA we disabled public access to those files, but she filed a counter-notice, and we re-enabled access. I don’t believe Scientology ever sued her, but I don’t think the files are still online. This event led to a story about DMCA abuse in Salon in July 1999. My own DMCA notice was regarding the fact that I had configured my home web server to proxy an image of Scientology head David Miscavige from their website, as a proof of concept to demonstrate that their attempts to prevent people from inline links to that image were ineffective. I submitted my own counter-notice, but because I didn’t really want to be sued, I modified my web server configuration so that the link pointed to part of the text of Scientology’s OT III (Operating Thetan III) document in Hubbard’s own handwriting (hosted on Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Dave Touretzky’s web page). In those days I gave quite a few public talks about Scientology, including one for the Phoenix Skeptics which the local Church of Scientology kindly provided an OT VIII to give a mild rebuttal. (I don’t remember his last name, but his first name was also Jim and he was a Scientology “public” member, meaning one who has paid his way through the courses without actually working for a Scientology organization. He seemed like a nice guy, he remained calm and non-confrontational.) I never really received any noticeable harassment from Scientology, unlike other locals such as Jeff Jacobsen and Bruce Pettycrew. Jeff was harassed and picketed at his work place claiming he was a pornographer, Gene Ingram showed up at his house and his sister’s house, PIs went through his garbage, he was deposed by Kendrick Moxon in one of the Scientology lawsuits, and was loudly threatened at that deposition that he would also be sued (which I was privileged to witness). Bruce had a temporary restraining order filed against him by Scientology Office of Special Affairs (OSA) Director Leslie Francis Duhrman, who falsely claimed that he was shouting and “disrupting church services.” The judge was fooled by her testimony into thinking that Scientology actually has Sunday services, but the TRO on Bruce’s picketing was lifted except for a restriction on making noise. Bruce also ended up having flyers attacking him distributed in his neighborhood by Scientology. For my part, I was invited to lunch in March 1996 with OSA Director Ginny Leason (Scientology paid), where I was asked what could be done to stop my criticism and picketing. My response was that they could stop attacking and lying about Internet critics. Ginny Leason, who seemed like a nice woman caught up in a bad organization, ended up being replaced as OSA Director shortly thereafter by Leslie Duhrman, who was a nasty piece of work. Here’s a photo of her on February 28, 1998, pointing and shouting at me that I can’t stop in the driveway (I didn’t), right after taking my picture. Another Scientology-related piece I wrote was a very brief web page pointing out the presence of a Scientologist on Libertarian candidate for president Harry Browne’s finance committee, as well as L. Ron Hubbard-inspired nonsense being touted in Liberty magazine by another Browne election campaigner and prominent libertarian, investment newsletter publisher Douglas Casey (apparently a Scientologist himself). The only continuing interest from Scientology that I’ve seen in me is that they still visit my website periodically from Scientology-owned IP blocks (most recently from 205.227.165.11 on January 1, 2006). On May 14, 2005, they hit my page after doing a search on “The Onion Scientology”–no doubt they were looking for this story on “Scientology Losing Ground to New Fictionology." I was never a member of Scientology, but I’ve had an interest in the subject since reading Eugene Methvin’s October 1981 Reader’s Digest article, and after taking their test in Los Angeles and reading Norman Spinrad’s “The Mind Game” in 1992. During my editorship of the Arizona Skeptic (July 1991-March 1993) I published several articles by Jeff Jacobsen on Scientology. I took notice when the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup was first created in 1991 (and was a home for the “Free Zone”), and then started reading and participating regularly in 1994 when Dennis Erlich started posting there and Scientology decided to respond by trying to remove the entire newsgroup. For more information on Scientology, a great place to start is Operation Clambake. I’ve got a fairly extensive list of Scientology-related links on my Skeptical Information site, and the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup is still quite active. Got questions or comments about Scientology? Ask here, and I’ll answer or point you in the right direction… ...

The Phoenix New Times, one of the country’s oldest free “alternative” weekly newspapers which has won numerous awards for its investigative reporting, has published the Mohammed cartoons that have stirred up so many protests. The cartoons appear in conjunction with an article titled “The Chosen One,” about local feminist Muslim Deedra Abboud, the director of the Arizona chapter of the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation, a civil rights group headquartered in D.C., and former director of the Arizona chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). She left CAIR after growing tired of responding to Ann Coulter, whom she feels doesn’t deserve the attention. (I agree.) Abboud is a recent Muslim convert, a former Southern Baptist business major at the University of Arkansas. She converted after a period of arguing against Muslims, then reading the Koran. Apparently she found Islam more sensible than Christianity, as she questioned the Trinity and how the notion of Jesus dying for the sins of mankind could possibly make any sense. It’s too bad she jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, dropping one bogus religion only to adopt another. Regarding the cartoon controversy, she is quoted saying “I don’t think Americans have been given the full context of those cartoons,” Abboud tells Uncle Nasty, her voice becoming louder as she tries to speak over the one on the other end of the phone. “I’m not defending the violence. But the editor of the Danish paper wasn’t trying to make a point; he was clearly trying to offend people."Actually, the editor of the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, solicited the cartoons because Danish author Kare Bluitgen had written a children’s book about Mohammed and was unable to find an illustrator. The editor wanted to see if there was really such a chilling effect against artists that they were afraid to illustrate the book, and solicited artists’ renditions of Mohammed, without specifying that they take any particular position. The instruction was to “draw the Prophet as they saw him." That children’s book, The Koran and the Life of Mohammed, is now a best-seller in Denmark, by the way–though its illustrator remains anonymous. The controversy arose four months after the Danish paper published the cartoons, and was heightened by Muslim imams who circulated the cartoons along with other, more offensive cartoons which were not published by the paper. Abboud claims she has been following the controversy since the original publication, and is aware of these other cartoons not being published by the Danish paper. Zuhdi Jasser, another prominent local Muslim (a politically conservative doctor who previously worked as a doctor at the U.S. Capitol and often writes op-ed pieces in the Arizona Republic) is described in the New Times piece as not trusting Abboud or the organizations she represents. Jasser organized a “Muslims Against Terrorism” rally at which CAIR representatives were not permitted to speak, because of what Jasser describes as their promotion of victimhood within the Muslim-American community.