Oops! A few miles of unpaved road for Ralph Reed

At age 44, he still has the choirboy looks that have been noted in dozens of profiles over the past 20 years. But the first major dent in Reed's carefully cultivated image came with the disclosure in the summer of 2004 that his public relations and lobbying companies had received at least $4.2 million from Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters to fight Indian casinos competing with Abramoff's casino clients.

Similarly damaging has been a torrent of e-mails revealed during the investigation that shows a side of Reed that some former supporters say cannot be reconciled with his professed Christian values.

"After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God," said Phil Dacosta, a Georgia Christian Coalition member who had initially backed Reed. "We are righteously casting him out."

Just noticing. Trying not to be smug about it, you know.
I'm not the only one who saw this...
H/T Laura Rozen, Southern Appeal, prob'ly others...

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Connecting some dots...

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There is a connection between the GWOT and a rash of corruption-in-Washington scandals. Sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences comes up and bites you in the butt. [As the FBI turned more of its attention and manpower to counterterrorism, the bureau handed off most of its drug-related inquiries to the DEA ...By 2003, senior FBI officials were fanning out to field offices across the U.S. to drive home the point that public corruption was now the criminal division's No. 1 priority.]

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And on this national holiday remembering MLK flocks of hawks are circling in a way intended to discredit the motives of those not in lock-step with the policies of the administration. [This weekend there are a number of events planned to use the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday as an excuse to attack the Bush Administration.] Forget all that foolishness about non-violence and questioning authority. The old term nigger-lover has been replaced by the unsubtle National Democrat-Pander-to-Blacks Day. Or maybe Michelle Malkin's more tepid race hustlers is a better candidate. Well, not exactly...today's "race hustlers" would have been called outside agitators in the good old days. Important rule for hurling epithets: sometimes a shotgun is more effective than a rifle; hits a bigger area and isn't as often completely fatal.

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King wrote...

...A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
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Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

His was the dream, but in that dream he could never imagine a time when laws and "policies" woven into the fabric of everyday politics would stomp roughly on the rights of the majority, let alone a minority. His old-fashioned Christian morality has become so...so...old-fashioned.

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When King was killed I was taking part in a production of G.B. Shaw's The Devil's Disciple at a community theatre. The news came about an hour before the curtain was to rise. The director called everyone in the cast together and told us what had happened, and related King's killing to the very play that we were performing...driving home the point that hanging a man for his beliefs was never and never will be effective in overcoming what he stands for. That sub-text was on everyone's mind, not just for that performance but one or two left in the run.