You Messed Up. Now Here's Your Promotion.

By Al Kamen
Friday, November 30, 2007

On Oct. 23, the day of FEMA's now infamous phony news conference, the agency's former external affairs chief, Pat Philbin, announced plans to promote a number of people in the shop as part of an effort to build a "new FEMA."

Cindy Taylor, deputy director of public affairs, was to become head of a new Private Sector Office, Philbin said in his e-mail to staff members. And Mike Widomski would move up to replace Taylor as deputy director of public affairs.

Loop Fans might recall that both of them, posing as reporters, asked questions of acting Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson. After our item, and an investigation of what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called "one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," we're happy to announce that Taylor and Widomski appear to have been disciplined, FEMA-style.

They've received the promotions they were in line to get.

So, according to the External Affairs Weekly report for this week, Taylor is director of the Private Sector Division, and Widomski is deputy director of public affairs.

Heck of a job.

They Must Have Had to Wash Their Hair

So let's see, a "senior administration official" told reporters Tuesday he was most pleased that there was a great turnout at the confab in Annapolis. "As I look at the membership of the Arab League," he said, "there are only six members out of the 22 who are not here -- Comoros, Djibouti, Somalia -- each of them probably have better things to do -- Iraq, Kuwait and Libya."

Okay, the first three don't count, because no one cares whether they showed. But the last three? Better things to do? Didn't we liberate Iraq and Kuwait? Aren't we making nice with Libya?

Fortunately, the genocidal regime in Sudan -- against which, by the way, we have sanctions and which President Bush himself denounced -- did show up.

Ashcroft and Water Sports

Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft stands ready to subject himself to waterboarding if he has to.

Ashcroft, speaking at the University of Colorado on Tuesday night, was asked if he'd undergo the practice, which has been prosecuted as torture in U.S. military courts since the Spanish-American War.

"The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do," he said, according to an account in the Rocky Mountain News. Sounds as though he would want a guarantee that he wouldn't drown, which might marginally mitigate the terror of being held strapped to a board and held upside down as water is poured into your mouth and nose, creating the sensation of drowning.

Asked if he knew at the time about the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison, Ashcroft said the Justice Department "does not run prisons in foreign lands," but he apologized for the abuse. "I'm sorry about Abu Ghraib," he said. "It was hurting the United States."

Well, yeah, not to mention the inmates. Asked about holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Ashcroft said: "Yes, it's a good place for them." Great snorkeling, windsurfing, blistering heat to remind them of home . . .

A Little Close to Home?

Bad enough that Mark W. Everson, the former Internal Revenue Service commissioner and deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, was so unceremoniously canned by the American Red Cross for having a "personal relationship with a subordinate employee."

Everson, who was deputy commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Services in the Reagan administration, had been on the job for only six months. Best we can tell, he set the world indoor record for being hired, hooking up and getting fired. Worse, his wife, Nanette, was the Bush White House's top ethics officer early in the administration before becoming general counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and, most recently, returning to the private sector.

Worst of all, in 2006, LawyerRoster.com listed her "Main Area of Concentration" as "Divorce."

Oh, dear.

In Relentless Pursuit of Facts

Keeping up with the Engel Codel. Rep. Eliot Engel's hardy band of 10 fact-seekers was in Brasilia yesterday, meeting with lawmakers, getting ready for an arduous float up the Amazon today as their journey winds up. (They've already been to Rio and Iguazu Falls.) The other members of the delegation led by Engel (D-N.Y.) are, according to a Brazilian parliament list forwarded by reporter Jo¿o Carlos Teixeira to our colleague Mike Shepard: Reps. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Tex.), Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) and John Salazar (D-Colo.). Though he's not on the official list, the office of Rep. Clifford Stearns (R-Fla.) says he's there, too.

So if you haven't seen those folks in their districts this week, that's because they're out working for you.

That core group, along with spouses, a military escort and a couple folks from the State Department, also boasts five House aides: Kay King, director of the office of interparliamentary affairs; Robyn Wapner, Foreign Affairs Committee GOP aide; Foreign Affairs subcommittee staff director Jason Steinbaum, and staff members Eric Jacobstein and Erin E. Diamond.

Do Your Part for Pakistan

Are you an architect or engineer? Worried about losing work if we slip into recession? Think international. Think Pakistan.

That nuclear-armed country -- beset by jihadists, facing rebellion in the northwest provinces, confronting nuclear India over Kashmir, having had a democratically elected leader for only less than half of its 60 years as an independent nation -- is chronically unstable. These days, even the lawyers are rioting in the streets.

Washington is hunting hard for ways to shore up the country and improve the Pakistanis' view of the United States and democracy. A recent Pew poll found only 48 percent of Pakistanis think democracy can work.

Here's where you can help. The Agency for International Development is proposing a project vital to the country's future: the new Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services building. This building, which you will design -- offers must be submitted by Jan. 4 -- will house the Pakistan Legislative Strengthening Program. We're told this will "address the needs of members of Parliament and their staff to perform essential legislative processes such as budgeting, operation of committees, and rules of parliamentary process."

Of course! Kind of their very own Congressional Research Service. That's the ticket! Wait till the tribes in Waziristan find out about this!