Global eye

Published: January 9, 2001 (Issue # 634)

Rebel Yell

Who's been a busy little bee, then, buzzing in his hive over the holidays? Why, little Georgie Bush Bee, that's who. While an overfed America sprawled in blissful post-prandial haze, Georgie was working his little tail off, secreting waxy Cabinet choices to make sweet honey for his hard-Right pals.

While dropping the usual verbal bricks ("Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods," Bush said at a meeting in Austin, Texas, no doubt to a roomful of brows furrowed and jaws agape), the unelected president-elect was busy stocking his cabinet with retreads and rejects: Ford and Nixon jowl-flappers, Reaganite underlings, Daddy's cronies and several politicos ousted by the voters in November. Despite the window dressing of a few acquiescent "ethnic" faces, the lineup is relentlessly right-wing - even white-wing - where it counts.

But let's not dawdle over choices like Spencer Abraham, the defeated senator who has tried several times to abolish the Energy Department and has now been appointed by Bush to head - what else? - the Energy Department. Or Gale Norton, the disciple of Reaganite Interior Secretary James "Jesus Is Coming Soon So Screw the Environment" Watt, whom Bush has tapped to nurture the nation's natural resources as, yes, interior secretary. Or Linda Chavez, the virulently anti-union, hard-right apparatchik who will now oversee - you guessed it - the Labor Department.

All of these are indeed bold, ideologically rigid choices for a judicially appointed president rejected by a majority of the nation's voters. But the creme de la creme of the cabinet picks can only be John "Johnny Reb" Ashcroft, defeated at the polls by a dead man but unbowed in his determination to bring a fiery Christian fundamentalism to his job as attorney general, the nation's chief law enforcement official.

Ashcroft is perhaps best known now for his cozy relationship with apologists for slavery, his embrace of the racial purity champions at Bob Jones University, and his extreme economy with the truth in opposing the appointment of a black federal judge.

As a senator, Ashcroft blocked Clinton's appointment of African-American Ronnie White to the federal bench. He claimed White was "pro-criminal" because, as a Missouri Supreme Court judge, he had upheld the death penalty in "only" 41 cases out of 59. Ashcroft's predilections for the "neo-Confederate" movement may have a teensy bit to do with his distaste for Judge White. Ashcroft is an aficionado of Southern Partisan, a magazine whose writers are given to full-throated praise of Nazi-Klansman David Duke, to sentimental doggerel depicting slaves happily reminiscing about "dem good ole days" with Massa. Ashcroft gave an interview to SP, lauding its stances - such as the magazine's claim that slavery is not "racism," and anyway, it's supported by scripture.

This then is the man who, as attorney general, will direct the Justice Department's investigation into voting irregularities in Florida, where thousands of descendants of dem happy ole slaves were systematically - mayhap deliberately - disenfranchised by the minions of America's new Massa. Yee-haw!

Down by Law

But if George W. is looking for other bold Republican leaders to staff his Praetorian Guard, he need look no further than Lebanon, New Hampshire, where GOP stalwart Tom Alciere will soon take a seat in the one of the nation's most venerable state legislatures.

Alciere, who bested the Democratic incumbent by a razor-thin margin, ran a very low-key campaign - so low-key, in fact, that his constituents weren't even sure exactly what he stood for. But boy, they sure know what he stands for now. This week, Alciere delivered himself of a few home truths in the county newspaper, ABCnews.com reports, including a rather idiosyncratic view of the local constabulary:

He thinks they should be killed.

In fact, Alciere "loves it" whenever a cop is gunned down. "It's unfortunate that cops do make it necessary, [but] they're waging a war on drugs and I view cops as enemy officers," he told the paper, adding that he is "too chicken" to pull the trigger himself. Even so, the legislator says: "Nobody will ever be safe until the last cop is dead."

Alciere is resisting resignation calls from GOP leaders - who obviously gave him the same kind of vetting job they gave old D-Dubya-I before his run. It turns out Alciere was twice peripherally involved in investigations of cop-killings, when he wrote letters praising the perpetrators. In 1997, for example, he called Carl Drega - who gunned down two state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor - a hero, who was, apart from that unfortunate murder of the editor, "an otherwise innocent cop-killer taking out enemy officers in battle."

Alciere also displayed a positively Bushian cynicism when it comes to dealing with the hoi polloi. While draping himself during the race with those warm, vague "healer-uniter" robes we know so well from the national election, Alciere came clean once the votes were counted. In a posting on his Web site, the 41-year-old statesman declared that he'd been voted in by a "bunch of fat, stupid, ugly old ladies that watch soap operas, play bingo, read tabloids and don't know the metric system."

Well, he may be a raving loony - but at least he knows the metric system. That's more than you can say for the 43rd president.