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Claude Allen, the former Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, is set to plead guilty, McClatchy reports. He'll admit to a single misdemeanor: for "fraudulently stealing items worth less than $500 from a Target store." He'll get no jail time - just $850 in restitution to Target Corp. and one month's probation. That's a pretty sweet deal considering police alleged that he stole over $5,000 from Target and Hecht stores. He faced up to 18 months in jail. So what's next for Allen? Oh, he'll bounce right back: Friends of Allen, a well-known conservative who rose from a senator's...

Did the pressures of being a black conservative take a toll on the former Bush aide? I WAS SHOCKED by the news about Claude A. Allen, the black former White House staffer whose rising star officially flamed out after he was arrested on charges of felony theft last week. Not shocked that he got arrested — so many Republicans are being handcuffed these days for scams of one kind or another that it's hard to keep the names and charges straight. What shocked me was how penny ante his alleged scam was, how unbefitting a man of Allen's stature and...

In one of the more ugly and mean-spirited op-ed pieces in the Los Angeles Times this year, opinion writer Erin Aubry Kaplan likened former Bush staffer Claude Allen to a "house Negro" from the days of slavery. (Claude Allen, a black man, resigned as President Bush's senior domestic policy advisor in early February. He was arrested on March 9 for theft of items from a Target and other stores.)What is the gist of Kaplan's nasty and condescending article ("Claude Allen's life sentence," 3/15/06)? Kaplan surmises that Mr. Allen's "compromises" and "cognitive dissonance" as a conservative black male may have taken...

I guess the only way we'll ever find out how many blacks have worked in the Bush administration is to wait for them to get in trouble someday so we can read the breathless, triumphant stories on the front page of the New York Times about a black Republican scofflaw. It's amazing that anyone has ever heard of Condoleezza Rice – she's never even been arrested for jaywalking. Claude Allen, whom I first heard of this week, was a top adviser to President Bush for more than 4 1/2 years. Soon after Bush was elected in 2000, he made Allen...

I guess the only way we'll ever find out how many blacks have worked in the Bush administration is to wait for them to get in trouble someday so we can read the breathless, triumphant stories on the front page of the New York Times about a black Republican scofflaw. It's amazing that anyone has ever heard of Condoleezza Rice – she's never even been arrested for jaywalking. Claude Allen, whom I first heard of this week, was a top adviser to President Bush for more than 4 1/2 years. Soon after Bush was elected in 2000, he made Allen...

Speaking of Allen, the Los Angeles Times carries a rather jaw-dropping column on his case from Erin Aubry Kaplan: "I don't support conservatism in its current iteration, and I support black conservatives even less, but we cannot ignore the racial implications of this latest Republican fall from grace. Here is a decidedly white-collar black man getting clipped for a blue-collar crime associated with economic necessity, one that practically guarantees prison time for most black men in this country. (Even if he's ultimately convicted, it's doubtful that Allen will end up behind bars.) . . . "Fast-track people such as Allen...

WASHINGTON, March 13 — Claude A. Allen often said his religious upbringing took him from a two-room apartment in a poor neighborhood of Washington to a post at the White House. "Probably the vast majority of the kids who grew up in our neighborhood were either strung out on drugs or in jail or dead," Mr. Allen, one of the nation's most prominent African-American Republicans, said in a televised interview. But Mr. Allen said his salvation was the Roman Catholic education "that taught me discipline, taught me hard work, that taught me values that were carried throughout life." Last week,...

Bush adviser charged with thefts Claude Allen was considered a rising Republican star US President George W Bush's former political adviser has been charged with stealing more than $5,000 (£2,900) from department stores. The president said he was "shocked" and "sad" on hearing the news about Claude Allen, who resigned abruptly as his domestic policy adviser last month. Mr Allen, 45, has denied at least 25 thefts from Target and Hecht's stores. The scam allegedly involved Mr Allen claiming refunds for merchandise that he did not buy. Mr Allen was arrested on Thursday by police in Montgomery County, Maryland, following...

Former White House Adviser Arrested Maryland Man Faces Theft Charges POSTED: 7:10 pm EST March 10, 2006 COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A former White House adviser and Bush administration nominee to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has been arrested and charged with theft for receiving phony refunds at department stores. Montgomery County police arrested Claude Alexander Allen, 45, of Gaithersburg, on Thursday for allegedly returning more than $5,000 worth of merchandise he did not buy, according to county law enforcement officials and a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the charges are state,...

Ex-White House official arrested for thefts Domestic policy adviser who resigned in January accused in return scam COLLEGE PARK, Md. - A former domestic policy adviser to President Bush has been charged with theft for allegedly receiving phony refunds at department stores. Claude Alexander Allen, 45, was arrested Thursday by Montgomery County police for allegedly returning more than $5,000 worth of merchandise he did not buy, according to county and federal authorities. Allen was the No. 2 official in the Health and Human Services Department when Bush nominated him in April 2003 to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals...

WASHINGTON -- Claude A. Allen, President Bush's domestic policy adviser and previously a Cabinet secretary in Virginia, has resigned his White House post. "Although this is a difficult decision, it is the best decision for my family," he wrote Bush on Wednesday in a letter released by the White House. Allen, 45, was tapped in January 2005 for the adviser's post. A staunch social conservative, he previously had served since May 2001 as deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. On Monday, he briefed Washington news media on the president's fiscal 2007 budget. "The message I...

WASHINGTON - Claude Allen recalls the joy and pain of telling his mother about his decision to work for an N.C. congressional candidate. "I said he was a Republican, and she was most upset," Allen said. "She said, `Oh, please don't do that, you'll ruin your life.' " Nearly a quarter-century later, Allen is President Bush's top domestic policy adviser, one of the administration's most senior African American members, and a protege of former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the conservative who fiercely opposed affirmative action and a federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Allen's political path from a...

President Bush met this afternoon with African-American business and community leaders and pastors in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, to discuss their efforts to serve their communities throughout the United States. He also issued a statement regarding his supplemental budget request for Iraq, most of which will be used to supply and protect our troops there. ENJOY your trip to Sanity Island, and the Daily Dose!!

President Bush announced that he has appointed Claude Allen, who served as an aide to former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, to be his new domestic policy advisor. Allen, whose appointment to the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was twice blocked by Democratic filibusters, is the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services where he has served since 2001. Allen is a staunch opponent of abortion rights. As Virginia’s top health administrator, Allen helped draft the state’s parental notification law and supported a law imposing a 24 hour waiting period and requiring biased information be...

With three weeks to Election Day, it is time for Republicans to close the deal with swing voters -- independents, Southern and Midwestern moderates, blue-collar households, Catholics, and Hispanics. The tactics of Senate Democrats and their liberal allies are now so nakedly partisan that the judiciary could well become the issue that wins tight Senate races and presidential battleground states for the GOP. (A secondary benefit of campaigning on this issue is that it establishes a clear "judiciary mandate" -- an advantage when addressing the Senate's rule for filibusters and a bonus when the time comes to nominate a Supreme...

Judge Claude Allen and his enemies: understanding the judicial fights

In April 2003, President Bush announced his intention to nominate Claude Alexander Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which reaches from Virginia to South Carolina. Sixteen months later, as with so many of the president's other nominees — courtesy of Senate Democrats — Allen is still waiting. The opposition to Allen is directed by left-wing interest groups, from where Senate Democrats increasingly take their marching orders. The National Organization for Women, for instance, has hit upon a most remarkable basis for opposing Allen: "Allen's three children are home-schooled." Never mind the fact that...

WASHINGTON - President Bush re-nominated Claude A. Allen for a federal appeals court seat yesterday, putting the conservative Virginian back in the spotlight and re-igniting a battle that pitted Maryland's two Democratic senators against the White House last year. Allen was nominated last spring to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, formerly held by Francis D. Murnaghan Jr., a liberal from Baltimore who died in 2000.

WASHINGTON - The Democratic leadership in the Senate vowed yesterday to fight President Bush's nomination of Claude A. Allen, a conservative Virginian whose selection for a federal appeals court seat is vehemently opposed by Maryland's two Democratic senators. To underscore his opposition to Allen, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota negotiated with Republicans to ensure that when the Senate recessed Monday for the holiday season, Allen's nomination was sent back to Bush. Allen, an African-American who is the Bush administration's deputy secretary of health and human services, is a fierce opponent of abortion rights….

<p>Federal appellate nominee Claude Allen told a Senate committee Tuesday he didn't mean it as a slur against homosexuals when he used the word "queer" while working as a press aide to a conservative Republican senator.</p> <p>Allen also said he was "conflicted" about the 1983 filibuster mounted by his then-boss, GOP Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, against a proposed federal holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.</p>