The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 77)
July 29, 2002
Cheney's Thugs Edition

This whole "corporate responsibility" thing is getting out of hand. This week, Dick Cheney (1) was served with court papers for his role in the Halliburton scandal, but cowardly Dick hid behind his security detail instead. GWB (2,5) shows up more than once on the list, which is becoming typical. John Ashcroft (3) is still trying to defend his TIPS program, while Harvey Pitt (4) is begging for a raise. Our old favorite Katherine Harris (8) is back. And a prison in Colorado (10) has come up with a creative new use for tainted meat. . Here's the key.

Dick Cheney
Things are getting ugly for Dick Cheney. How ugly? Try these on for size: an SEC investigation, a federal court summons, abuse of power, obstruction of justice. Last week when Judicial watch served court papers to Cheney�s office, White House security thugs threatened to arrest the person serving the papers. Let me repeat that: White House security threatened to arrest a person serving court papers to Dick Cheney. Didn�t hear about it in your local newspaper? Well, that�s because the U.S. Constitution gives the president and vice president the right to break the law and obstruct justice �when the country is in a state of war with brown people halfway around the globe.� What, you don�t remember that part of the Constitution? Clearly you hate America, and you probably hate the Pledge of Allegiance, too. Why don�t you just burn a flag while you�re at it, and leave our beloved vice president alone! You are helping the terrorists win!

George W. Bush
We�re still at war. We haven�t found Osama. The economy is a mess. CEOs fly their golden parachutes while regular folks get the shaft. Clearly, there�s work to be done. But what does Dubya do? He�s going on vacation� for a month. (Must be nice.) The rest of us suckers only get two weeks off per year. But this guy, who theoretically holds the most important job on the entire planet, is going to kick up his cowboy boots on his preppy golf-cart �ranch� in Crawford. Pathetic. I�m guessing it�s only a matter of time before we�re subjected to the same lame publicity shots of George chopping wood for five minutes. See, he�s not lazy; he�s chopping wood. A hundred bucks says his down-home plaid wood-chopping shirt in the photo-op still has the creases in it because some White House lackey bought it at the K Street Brooks Brothers store that morning.

John Ashcroft
Clearly, the Attorney General just doesn�t get the whole civil liberties thing. Testifying before Congress last week, Ashcroft defended the Administration�s proposed TIPS program, a soviet-style citizen informant program, as non-threatening to civil rights. His reason: There won�t be a computer database. Phew! That�s a relief! So I�ve got the cable TV guy reporting to the feds that I watch too much PBS -- big deal! I sure am glad that they�re storing that info in a big-ass filing cabinet instead of a database. That makes the whole scheme much better, and not at all threatening! Thanks, John!

Harvey Pitt
Bad PR move #67: When everyone in Washington wants you to resign, don�t ask for a raise, it makes you look stupid and out-of-touch. Last week Harvey Pitt, the incompetent chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, decided that he deserved a raise and a promotion. Hey, great job on Enron and WorldCom, Harv! Those schmucks working there didn�t really want their 401(k)s anyway. And the rest of us are just thrilled that our investments have lost a quarter of their value this year. Trillions of dollars, gone. Poof! Here�s an extra $30K per year for you, Harv, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer! You earned it! *smooch*

George W. Bush
Pop quiz. What�s more important: a) protecting America from terrorists, or b) union busting. If you�re George W. Bush, the answer is b. Last week the White House threatened to veto the Senate Homeland Security bill because they say it doesn�t provide Bush with enough �personal flexibility.� (When you�ve had as many benders as George has, personal flexibility is vitally important. Boom-tiss.) By personal flexibility George actually means the �ability to treat employees like the serfs they are.� You don�t want any of that communistic collective bargaining stuff. If a federal worker wants to make more money, they should do it the old fashioned way - ask daddy for a couple mil. Either that, or insider trading. After all, Bush is a federal worker, and that�s what he does when he needs a little walkin� around money.

Secret Service Bigot
Last week, federal agents searched the home of an Arab-American man in Dearborn, Michigan, who was caught carrying $12 million in fake cashiers checks into the United States. But the otherwise upstanding group of federal agents included one stupid bigot from the Secret Service who decided it would be cool to deface a Muslim prayer calendar in the defendant�s home. The unidentified agent wrote �Islam is Evil� and �Christ is King� on the calendar, apparently thinking that this particular Muslim was ripe for conversion to Christianity using the patented �insult their religion and deface their property� conversion strategy.

Peter Kirsanow
As the Bush regime continues its attack on civil rights, it looks like we�ve got at least one fox guarding the henhouse. Last week Peter Kirsanow, a conservative Bush appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, commented that if there is another terrorist attack in America, "not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stops and more profiling." He went on to add that �there will be a groundswell of public opinion to banish civil rights. � So the best thing we can do to preserve them is by keeping the country safe." I think we�ve heard this one before. If we want to protect civil rights, we�ve got to be willing to sacrifice civil rights. We had to destroy the village in order to save it. Civil rights groups were outraged, and demanded the removal of Kirsanow. With the current Administration in power, our guess is that this guy isn�t going to get removed. He�ll probably get promoted to goddam chairman.

Katherine Harris
Is Katherine Harris crooked or just plain dumb? You decide. Last Tuesday the Florida Department of Elections made a last-minute �correction� to campaign filing fees, which required legislative candidates to submit an additional $43.20 by Friday afternoon. A flurry of phone calls were made to candidates across the state, but at least one Democrat never got the news. (We�re shocked.) No doubt the Department of Elections will be treating late-filers in the same way they treated late votes in 2000: If they�re Democrats, they�re screwed. But if they�re Republicans, no problem. On Tuesday, Harris was nowhere to be found. Presumably she was busy applying her daily coat of rouge with a trowel, or else she was off campaigning for the U.S. Congress. And who can blame her? Nobody takes elections seriously anymore.

The Bush Administration
Is the Bush Administration soft on torture? Last week the UN held a vote on a protocol to provide strict monitoring of prisons and other facilities to verify that torture is not taking place. As democratic governments across Europe and Latin America lined up in support of the measure, the United States was opposed. The U.S. stance put us in the esteemed company of backward-ass human-rights basket cases like Iran, Nigeria, China, Cuba, Pakistan, and Egypt. A veritable human-rights honor roll, these countries. It�s embarrassing. Do the schmucks in this Administration have any shame at all?

Buena Vista Correctional Institution
And finally, this country is entirely too soft when it comes to our treatment of prisoners. Fortunately, some brave souls around the country have decided to stand up to creeping pantywaist liberalism in our penal system with all-American correctional reforms like overcrowding, chain gangs, rape, and delicious meals of tainted meat. The administrators of the Buena Vista Correctional Institution in Colorado served their inmates 2500 pounds of beef which they knew was tainted with the E. coli bacteria. The beef had been recalled by ConAgra, but instead of sending back so much quality protein, they chose to serve it to inmates as delicious meat loaf. None of the inmates got sick, since the meat loaf was cooked enough to kill the bacteria. Apparently there are a few liberal holdovers still cooking in the Buena Vista kitchen. See you next week!