. . . . whenever there's a Bush Administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, where are they getting these screw-ups from? Well, now we know. From Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding.
Take Monica Goodling, who, before she resigned last week, because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's 33 years old. And though she never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 93 U.S. Attorneys.
How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College. You know, Messiah, home of the Fighting Christ-ies? And then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said that the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor, has a law school.
And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you only have to read one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a Tier Four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook.
This is for people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix.
Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist's diploma mill work in the Bush Administration? 150. And you wonder why things are so messed up. We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college funded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U.? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House?
In 200 years, we've gone from "We, the people," to "Up With People." From "the best and the brightest" to "dumb and dumber." And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school?
The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by "elites." It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And, by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her a$$ out of jail, went to a real law school.
A story about Regent's
http://www.slate.com/id/2163601/
Btw, the LS were I teach is also fourth tier, like Regent's and Ave Maria (where Judge Bork, formerly of Yale LS, now teaches), so I can't afford to be a snob. But I do like to think we are a real law school. My best students are quite good and I've worked with some of our grads whom I respect a good deal. Probably some graduates of Regent's and Ave Maria are also able lawyers. And you have to say this about Goodling: she learned enough to know it was prudent to take the Fifth rather than to admit to having committed a crime.
Speaking of Yale, I didn't know Pat Robertson has a Yale law degree:
http://www.patrobertson.com/Biography/index.asp
-- A fact from which I draw no significance, it's just interesting. Except maybe it means Robertson wasn't paying attention in Con Law when they talked about the Establishment Clause. 1955 puts him at Yale around the time that William F. Buckley was complaining that there wasn't enough God at there.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com