Just another rogue in the gallery

Really, the only thing shocking about this is that it was so amateurish. To be shocked that a Republican would break the law is a sign of either insincerity or inattention.

President Bush on Saturday said he was shocked and saddened to learn that former domestic policy adviser Claude Allen was charged with theft for allegedly receiving phony refunds at department stores.

Allen, 45, was arrested Thursday by police in Montgomery County, Md., for allegedly claiming refunds for more than $5,000 worth of merchandise he did not buy, according to county and federal authorities. He had been under investigation since at least January for alleged thefts on 25 occasions at Target and Hecht's stores.
Allen, who had been the No. 2 official at the Health and Human Services Department, was named as domestic policy adviser at the White House in early 2005. He resigned abruptly on Feb. 9, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family.

The night of Jan. 2, after an alleged incident at the Target in Gaithersburg, Md., presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Allen called White House chief of staff Andy Card to tell him what had happened. The next morning, Allen spoke in person with Card and White House counsel Harriet Miers.

The president first learned of Allen's planned departure and the January incident in early February. But since Allen had passed the usual background checks and had no other prior issues that White House officials were aware of, "he was given the benefit of the doubt," McClellan said.

Nobody bothered to tell Bush about this for a month after finding out. But Bush doesn't live in a bubble.

Before you join George Bush at the Claude Allen pity party, let's review a bit of his professional history.

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."

Hmmm. I'd say that a self-described born-again Christian African American who worked for Jesse Helms -- a senator whose racist history includes opposing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and accusations by the Justice Department that he threatened 125,000 black voters with jail if they tried to vote -- and was twice nominated unsuccessfully for 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a little "odd and unusual."

Being a prominent Republican and a former member of the Bush administration accused of a crime might be about the least odd and unusual thing about Claude Allen.