THE EARMARK

Remember how, back in 2008, we all voted out the Republicans because they were greedy, corrupt, and disrespectful of the voting public?  Well give them this much: At least they were good at it.

If you want to see politicians who are simultaneously a) corrupt and b) really bad at it, look no farther than New York state, where elected Democrats are tarnishing every institution of disciplined corruption that the Gambino family worked for decades to establish.

To illustrate our point, here’s a list of all the corrupt Democrats that New York has had to endure in recent months… plus the corrupt Republicans they could learn from.

Corrupt Democrat	Act of Corruption	Republican Who Did It Better
Eliot Spitzer, ex-governor	Hard to believe this was 2 years ago.  Spitzer rode a wave of self-righteousness all the way to Washington, DC, where he washed up aboard The Mayflower… and then paid several thousand dollars for rough sex.	David Vitter, who one-ups Spitzer’s hypocrisy by trying to criminalize the very prostitution industry he patronized so faithfully.
David Paterson, current governor	Allegedly used state police to intimidate the victim of his wife-beating aide. And he forced the Yankees to give him free World Series tickets.	Rudy Giuliani knows more about exploiting the Yankees.  He also knows how to get way more out of thuggish police officers.
Hiram Monserrate, ex-State Senator	Beat the crap out of his live-in girlfriend.	Ousted Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) beat the crap out of his live-in mistress.
Charlie Rangel, U.S. Representative	Despite chairing the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, he appears to not have declared a taxable asset since the Carter administration.	Ex-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who’s paying back taxes on lobbying gifts in the form of hand-made license plates.
Eric Massa, U.S. Representative	Propositioned a male aide in his Capitol Hill offices.	Actually, Massa even beats the Republicans in this category.  Not even Mark Foley was slick enough to use the excuse: “I’m just a salty old sailor.“

Okay, we admit it:  The above headline is a randomly generated combination of words that got spit out of a computer.  But it turns out that there’s a news story to which it correlates.

It seems that Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada (premier ministre du Canada), attended the state funeral of a Catholic governor general (gouverneur général) and was offered the traditional wafer representing the body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (notre Seigneur et Sauveur Maurice Richard.)  And based on what happened next, let’s just hope the Prime Minister was on Atkin’s or something like that…

Harper, a devout Protestant, attended last week’s state funeral for Canada’s former governor general, Romeo LeBlanc, during which a Catholic priest offered him a communion host.

Television images, some of which have been posted on YouTube, showed Harper receiving the host. The camera remained on the premier for several seconds but it did not show him actually place the wafer into his mouth…

A Catholic official, vicar general Brian Henneberry, raised the controversy by openly wondering what Harper had done with the wafer.

Henneberry, who is chancellor of Saint John in New Brunswick where the funeral took place, said it would be scandalous had the prime minister put it in his pocket.

Our good friend Dennis DiClaudio at Indecision Forever notes that it’s simply un-Canadian to judge a head of state based on whether or not he partakes in an archaic medieval tribute to blood sacrifice; that tends to be the domain of the United States.

But just as Christ died for the sins of others, so too are American politicians covering our allies’ asses in the eyes of the Lord.  As if anticipating that Harper would one day refuse the body of Christ, prominent Catholic leaders like Ted Kennedy, Vito Fossella and Mark Foley have been consuming the blood of Christ at a frenetic pace for decades — all for Canada’s sake, of course.

Praise the Lord for good allies!

Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was arguably the most disgraced member of the George W. Bush White House.  As Bush’s personal lackey dating back to Texas days, Gonzales worked odd jobs around the West Wing until John Ashcroft was Raptured, clearing the way for him to become the nation’s top law enforcer.  There, as the head of the Department of Justice, he attempted to show how much he understood the nation’s lawbreakers, by promoting unwarranted wiretapping, torture, and the illegal firing of U.S. Attorneys.  He capped it off by perjuring himself in front of Congress.

After bowing to loud resignation calls that came even from Republican leaders, in 2007 Gonzales rode off into the sunset of private law practice, where he found that no one - no one - would hire him.  But nearly two years later, the former AG has finally found an employer: Texas Tech University, which has hired him to teach a “junior-level course” in the Political Science department.

You may remember Texas Tech from another career that ended in disgrace: basketball coach Bobby Knight!  After choking one too many students, Knight was fired from Indiana University, where he had coached for 30 seasons.  He was happily picked up by Texas Tech, which didn’t seem to mind the coach’s colorful vocabulary and penchant for throwing chairs at referees.

It’s anyone’s guess who will be the next to join Gonzales and Knight in Lubbock.  May we humbly suggest Mark Sanford to chair the Religious Studies department and Mark Foley to teach Adolescent Psychology?