The Grand Inquisitor and his Bitch

I am starting to suspect that Rachel Alexander is just a big suck-up. Maybe she is as ambitious as her boss, the Grand Inquisitor, Andrew Thomas.

Ludwig von Mises once noted that in bureaucracy the way to advance is to suck up to the “old men” at the top. That’s how he put it. Basically in politics the only performance that counts is making happy the people who can promote you. That usually means sucking up to them big time.

We have seen Rachel’s bimbo-esque distortion of the Bandy case. She played fast and loose with the truth. I guess that is part of the “biblical” morality she lauds so publicly.

The far Right MichNews.com site loves Rachel. And like so many intellectual conservatives, or what passes for them these days, they know what traits of Rachel’s to promote. “If you are obsessed with blondeness, and sure that it’s the blonder the better, of course you’ll prefer Ann Coulter [I’m only quoting this guy so don’t blame me. Grab an air sickness bag and keep reading.] Otherwise, it’s Rachel Alexander, hands down (or up).”

This pro-Rachel site of Right-wing lunatics tells us that Rachel is an “attorney who lives and works in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan areas (sic, areas?), a former Republican Babe winner and Founder and Co-editor of www.intellectualconservative.com.” This “Republican Babe” thing seems big with the Right. How seriously do you take a movement obsessed with who is, or isn’t a “Babe.” And, considering that they think Ann Coulter qualifies, one must question their tastes as well.

I mean Ann Coulter! The woman looks like the offspring of an anorexic racoon and a giraffe. She is a stick-figure woman with a neck that is far too long for her body and eyeliner so thick she looks like a racoon on speed. Rachel, no doubt, deserves the award, she certainly deserves the company.

Apparently to be a “Republican Babe” you have to be malicious, dishonest and vicious. Coulter certainly is. And the “reply” that Rachel Alexander wrote at Fox fits the bill.

Now, back to how conservatives see Ms. Alexander. MichNews says that Rachel is “way above Ms. Coulter on the long list of those qualified for the Supremes.” What! My god, conservatives don’t have much in the way of qualifications anymore. Basically this editorial said she is a “Republican Babe”and a lawyer and not elitist. Therefore, she’s qualified for the Supreme Court. But, considering what kind of people they think are qualified for the presidency, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

They also claim her “web site appeals especially to intellectual conservatives and libertarians.” They ought to correct that. It most certainly has nothing to appeal to libertarians. And, these days, “intellectual conservatives” are a rare species. Rachel’s rebuttal showed what passes as intellectual in the conservative movement these days.

And, we discover another link between Rachel and fundamentalist extremists. Focus on the Family, one of the worst of the Far Right Theopublican groups, thinks highly enough of her that they bring her on the show to discuss politics. In these circles, what that means is not intellectual rigor or independence of thought. It means slavish obedience to the moralistic agenda of the Religious Right. Consider that Alexander has been a lawyer for four years and has zero academic experience, never been a judge, and is a bureaucrat. Yet, Focus on the Family has her come on to talk about Constitutional theory. Even when she studied law her specialty was consumer law, not constitutional law. But, these groups don't care if the person actually knows the field. They just want them to say the right things. If they do, they will be crowned with having the "expertise," even though they obviously do not.

If you say the right things, no matter what is between your ears (or in spite of it), you are acceptable. Rachel is acceptable. And anyone acceptable to Focus on the Family ought not call herself “fairly libertarian.” MichNews mention her credentials as a writer, all of which focuses on the fact that her “columns” appeared on a slew of Far Right web sites, most of which are minor sites with little credibility such as MichNews, Rantweb, Rightgrrl, Enter Stage Right and Conservative Truth.

Now, back to the sucking up. Rachel’s column defending her boss was a major suck up job. But it was not her first. She has used her “writing skills” before to suck up big time to Andrew Thomas -- yes the same Andrew Thomas who has her as his deputy. I quote:

“Andrew Peyton Thomas, the district attorney for Maricopa County, Arizona, and a graduate of Harvard Law School, has put together a well-written, intriguing expose on the state of free speech at his alma mater, providing an insider’s perspective of the top law professors in the country. Oddly enough, the friction over free speech is not between the political 'left' and the 'right,' because there are practically no conservatives in the administration or on the law faculty, and the majority of students offered admission are also of the leftist persuasion. The battle over free speech is between the 'left' and the 'far left.' (p. 170)”

Ross Perot once commented about the “sucking sound” he thought was coming from Mexico, supposedly “stealing jobs’ from America. He got the general direction right but it was from Phoenix, and it was Rachel sucking up to Andrew Thomas. By the way the book her boss wrote, that she so praises, was published by Encounter Books, a right-wing publishing house.

Rachel also posted her praises of the book at Amazon.com, to encourage people to buy the book. And while she tosses around her position in Thomas’ office with great regularity elsewhere, for some odd reason, she neglected to mention it in any of her reviews. She wouldn’t want to inform people of her conflict of interests. So, her piece at Fox isn't the first time she's played PR rep for the man who gave her a cushy government job.

In another column she writes: “Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio are the only law enforcement officials in the country arresting and prosecuting illegal immigrants under anti-human smuggling (coyote) statute.” Please note that what Thomas did was prosecute an illegal immigrant for smuggling himself! If that isn’t twisting the law, I don’t know what is. This is like charging someone with "molestation" for masturbating or claiming you are kidnapper because you took yourself across state lines. But, the logic seems on par with Rachel’s thinking.

Another column praises her boss yet again, and runs a picture of him a few inches from her own picture. She’s on top! He’s on the bottom. She refers to him as “Maricopa County’s tough on crime prosecutor Andrew Thomas.” (Suck, suck, suck.)

In yet another column she sings the praises of Andrew Thomas. In fact it looks as if she merely reposted a publicity release that Thomas sent out. In yet another post, she merely repeats the publicity releases sent out by Thomas’ office again.

At another Right-wing web site she wrote: “The federal government may not be doing much when it comes to illegal immigration, but Arizona’s Maricopa Country Attorney [Andrew Thomas, her boss] and Sheriff are.” The bio line on this column refers to her web site as “wildly popular.” A bio line is usually suggested by the writer or posted with their approval. So at least she spends some time praising herself -- I was starting to think all she does is praise Andrew Thomas. I mean the way she keeps writing about him you’d think she was sleeping with him. Of course she wouldn’t since that is not biblical. BTW: at a right-wing conference Alexander admitted that her website gets very little traffic and said that the "wildly popular" claims she makes is a way to giver herself unearned credibility. She claims the media will accept her claims and give her more publicity that way.

The “World O’Crap” blog implies they were receiving comments from Rachel, but she was hiding her identity. “Here’s an interesting fact for you: the email address used by our new friend ‘Scottie Dinkle’ seems to belong to Rachel Alexander, the author of that handbook on Getting Custody to Avoid Paying Cild Support. (At least, it’s the email address Rachel used to organize “a debate on illegal immigration between conservatives and libertarians: in June of this year.)” I don’t know what that is all about, but it sounds deceptive. But, they did point to this interesting piece of information.

The Phoenix New Times ran an article on the bizarre antics of Thomas Andrews on January 13, 2005. It seems that when Andrews took office he immediately started demoting people who had experience and credentials in their field, and brought in novices who were ideologues. And it mentions that Thomas “appointed Tom McDermott, Brad Smith, Tim LaSota and Rachel Alexander as special assistant/deputy county attorneys. The quartet has little experience in the practice of law, with Alexander having held a bar license for the longest time -- four and a half years.”

I just want to pause for a second to point out the date of this article: January 13, 2005. Now, go to the Rachel Alexander article praising her boss for his book which attacks Harvard Law School for not being Right-wing. It is dated May 16, 2005. So, keep in mind that when she wrote this review, she had just been appointed to a cushy, well-paid job for which her qualifications were very meager. Reviewing a book written by your employer might be considered a conflict of interest. So how does Rachel handle it in the Enter Stage Right column? Well, when they list her credentials they simply neglect to mention she was working for the man. More of that biblical morality, no doubt.

According to Phoenix New Times Thomas is “best known for inflammatory screeds on such topics as child care, abortion, and other societal issues. He’s certainly a kindred philosophical spirit with new special assistant Rachel Alexander...”

What kind of man is Thomas, outside the viciousness and ineptitude he showed in the Bandy case? Well, pretty extreme. No wonder Rachel loves him. And Thomas takes care of his friends. He did give his old law firm $326,000 in county business. I’m sure he takes care of Rachel as well. After all, with just four years in the legal profession she ends up with a well paid job as his assistant.

In a previous book Thomas called for “publicly incarcerating drug dealers and other criminals, displaying them before their neighbours in large, open-air holding pens with their names and crimes prominently displayed, a modified stockade program could provide specific deterrence at marginal cost and general deterrence for the community.” This sounds like the sort of tactics the Red Guard used under Mao. Has the lunatic Right go so far into totalitarianism that they are now suggesting we follow the example of the Red Guard?

Who would get this treatment? Mothers who hold jobs? Possibly since, according to our friends at Reason magazine, Thomas “castigated career-minded parents who put their children in day-care. Thomas called them ‘more respectable, less violent versions of Susan Smith,’ the North Carolina woman who drowned her two sons in lake because they were interfering with her post-divorce love life.” Elsewhere Thomas said child care “mentally impaired” children.

Rachel is not content with smearing Matt Bandy and sucking up to Andrew Thomas. She also has to attack Wendy McElroy for writing her column. And again she distorts the facts. She refers to Wendy as “a former writer for my web site.” This sounds as if perhaps she and Wendy had a falling out since Wendy used to write for her. Maybe Wendy was being dishonest because she had this falling ou,t and was trying to embarrass the office for which rancid Rachel works.

But, the truth again is not quite the way Rachel puts it. Wendy is a columnist for Fox News and, in my opinion, one of the few really decent columnists they have. In addition, she is a top notch person in general. But, Wendy never wrote for Rachel’s web site. She wrote her normal column, which Rachel’s site reproduced. It was reproduced with permission and Wendy is very generous with giving permission to reprint her material. But, she didn’t write it for Rachel. Nor was she employed in any way by, or for that web site. It is a tad bit deceptive to call Wendy “a former writer for my web site.” But, it is par for the course for Rachel.

Alexander says that Wendy drank “the kool-aid of 20/20 and other media spin regarding the prosecution of Matt Bandy.” The reference is to the poison laced kool-aid given out by Rev. Jim Jones to his brainwashed cult members. And, then right below her comments about Wendy she makes the most extreme accusation yet about Matt Bandy. “Bandy admitted to frequenting a Yahoo child porn group...”

What an evil bitch. I use the word bitch to mean everything it usually means in this context and then some. Note how she changed her accusation once it was off Fox News. At Fox she claimed he visited “an online group known for sharing pornographic images of children.” Here she says he went to a child porn group.

In the first instance she is saying he went to a group where some people are known to have traded images. In the second accusation she is saying he went to a group that was set up expressly to exchange those images. This is a major change in her accusation. And, it is a lie. Matt admitted he went to a Yahoo group that had pictures of adult women in the nude and which was set up for that purpose. It was not a child porn group, but a group that some people supposedly used to exchange child porn with one another. Someone uploaded a kiddie porn image to the group, or to someone on the group, which is why Yahoo reported it. And they claimed it came from Matt’s computer.

Alexander now turns a Yahoo group for Playboy-like images into a “child porn group.” What a contemptible thing for her to do. How does she sleep at night? (And no jokes about “under Andy Thomas” either.) The more I read about Rachel Alexander the more I am convinced she is dishonest and vicious. So, when her pals on the extreme Right compare her to Ann Coulter -- well, they ain’t that far off. Coulter usually slanders only adults. Rachel publicly slanders teens. You decide which is worse.