How Embarrassing!
by Vince Daliessio
Or rather, it WOULD be embarrassing. Except that the Bush Administration seems incapable of being embarrassed.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, Rudy Giuliani's former driver(and current associate), has had to withdraw his name from consideration for the post of Homeland Security Director. The official reason given is that he had hired a nanny who was an illegal immigrant.
That's pretty bad, considering that one of this guy's many jobs as the head of the gigantic, sprawling Department of Homeland Security was to be, in part, keeping illegal immigrants out of the country, when he couldn't seem to keep them out of his own house.
But Kerik has a few other problems;
- Not one, but apparently TWO mistresses (one of which was an employee of his, the other his publisher);
- A lawsuit over Kerik's treatment of an employee in connection with one of the mistresses;
- An illegitimate Korean daughter;
-Lingering questions about Kerik's short stint as a consultant to the new Iraqi government with troubled contractor DynCorp;
- A just-concluded option exercise resulting in Kerik netting $6 million dollars from the sale of Taser International stock, a company that is expected to supply the remote stun guns to the Department, and ;
- A record of official dealings with Interstate Industrial Construction, which is known to be affiliated with New York's Gambino crime family.
Really, shouldn't Bush have made a call over to the FBI before floating Kerik's name for the job?
Either the president is as dumb as many say he is, or he wanted to publicly embarrass both Giuliani and Kerik.