The New Monica

by Glenden Brown

For those not absorbed the Prosecutor Purge, America’s New Monica may be a unfamiliar. The short version: Monica Goodling, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University law school and Messiah College (I’m not familiar but I’m guessing it’s a wingnut training ground) has taken the Fifth to prevent implicating herself in illegal activities with regard to the Prosecutor Purge.
Via kos, I find this:

I hate to keep harping on this point. But it seems pretty damn likely that Monica Goodling was right at the center of the inappropriate politicization of career DOJ employees.

You see, I think it highly likely that one of the reasons Goodling is pleading the Fifth is because she caused Paul McNulty to commit perjury. But another reason–a much bigger one, given the centrality of the politicization of DOJ hiring to the scandal surrounding the USA purge, is because she committed regular violations of the laws in place to prevent the politicization of our career employees.

Again, via Kos, this quote illuminates part of the problem.

Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft, then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

Regent University is unabashedly a training ground for arch-conservatives. It is more about indoctrination than education.

Via TPM, we have Monica Goodling’s personal website, including an essay she wrote about neglected children. Is it an essay on neglect and abuse? No. Is it an essay about AIDS orphans in Africa? No.

All across America millions of parents seem to feel that their children are not worth the time it takes to raise them–the time it takes to shower them with love, listen with interest to their thoughts, nurture values of trust, honesty, fairness, joy, and justice. Regretfully, the children do not even know that their experience is abnormal, and that if they had just been born in the beginning of the century instead of at the end, chances are that their lives would have been much different. This paper will examine the devaluation of America’s children and propose solutions to the various components of the problem.

The essay is worth reading only for the glimpse it provides into the wingnuttiest of wingnut minds. Goodling’s essay is embarrassingly simplistic - cloying and sentimental, filled with saccharine images of an idealized past, stereotypes of single people, and greeting card images of children and families. Rather than proposing any solutions that might actually address the problems faced by America’s families, she issues an empty call for more love in the family.

Parents should be encouraged to give up an extra income, unless it is absolutely essential to support the family. Better the family have a lot of love and not as many possessions, than the other way around.

Studies have shown that children who are deeply religious can rise above even the worst poverty and neglect. 35 Their basic training in moral and ethical values makes them survivors. Christian education and development is thus crucial to all children, and should be supported by all parents.

Healthy Start” programs are valuable, where parents take risk assessment tests for abuse and neglect, and then receive parenting training if risks are detected. Head Start and preschool programs help develop children and give them valuable support where parents can not.

Educators should develop mediation and conflict management techniques in their students, promote violence prevention, and increase efforts to ensure individual emphasis and attention is given to each child.

Recreation centers, mentorship programs and tutors should be encouraged.

None of these proposals are new, innovative or particularly insightful. From another angle, I had the good fortune to attend a truly rigorous college. Had I turned in this paper, any one of my professors would have gladly given me an F for this sentimental, fact free sop. I would go so far as to suggest that such fact free, platitude filled thinking has gotten us into the mess we’re in now and what we need is some good, old-fashioned American smarts - hard headed, intellectual, respecting only that which produces results rather than meaningless fell goodism.

http://oneutah.org

They're taking the...



Fifth!

Apparently, a member of the Bush administration has finally found that the Bill of Rights is a law they can live with, at least for themselves.

(Note: Southern Comfort is in honor of Virginian Monica Goodling, who learned her lawyering skills at the right hand of Pat Robertson.)

www.attytood.com