Bye-bye, Bernie.
The White House tried to slip the Bernie Kerik story into the news
black hole that is late Friday night, and yet it's Monday and everyone
is still talking about it. For the Bush administration, the first major
botch of a second-term Cabinet pick — unless you consider choosing as
attorney general the legal architect of Abu Ghraib torture “botching” a
nomination, and we wouldn't blame you if you did — looks more amateur
hour as information continues to be revealed about Kerik's background.
And it wasn't just
Kerik's “nanny problem.” Maybe it's us, but having an arrest warrant
issued in your name for unpaid condo fees, of all things, testifying in
court about an alleged affair
with an underling, making millions off a company that sells weapons to
the agency you're named to head, being accused of abusing authority
while investigating the private lives of employees, and having a spotty
record as interim Iraqi interior minister (and there's more where that came from)
constitute baggage that should have given the White House pause even
before Kerik “discovered” recently — how shocked he must have been! —
that the woman working in his home that whole time tax-free probably
was here illegally. [Salon.com]