"Quesadilla"? But isn't ex-Sen. George Allen's middle name "Macaca"?

Would you buy a used constitution from this man?

by Ken

From Al Kamen's Washington Post "In the Loop" column today:

Hold the salsa

Speaking of [former Virginia Sen. George] Allen, it is time once again to caution everyone about undue reliance on Wikipedia.

We went to the site Wednesday afternoon to check some information and noticed something amiss. Wikipedia had Allen's full name as George Quesadilla Allen. Was someone trying to say he was a cheesehead, or maybe of Latino heritage? Or could it be a hacker's tag line or signature? The rest of the bio seemed to be accurate.

We asked a colleague, Web producer Greg Linch, to check it out. Linch viewed the Wikipedia revision history for Allen's page and found that the errant alteration - Allen's middle name is Felix, after his mom's dad - occurred Monday. The user who made the change appears to have used a computer in the World Bank's office here in the District, according to an IP-address search. It's also possible the IP address, which is a way devices are identified on a network, was hijacked from outside the building.

Trust but verify, as Ronald Reagan used to say.

IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHY OUR PAL AL
WAS "SPEAKING OF ALLEN" . . .

Are you sitting down? It was in an item headed, rather luridly, "George Allen as Egypt's James Madison?" Does that get your attention, or what? Quick, try to imagine what James Madison and the "Macaca" Man could possibly have in common other than their home state of Virginia.

Give up? It has to do with an op-ed piece the former senator (and likely 2012 candidate for the seat being vacated by Sen. Jim Webb) contributed to Politico, in which he provided advice for Egypt on drafting a new constitution, based on his experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now you might be hard put to imagine "Macaca" George offering anyone advice on anything except perhaps Things to Not Get Caught Doing on Some $&*%*#&%'s Camera.

Here's our pal Al again:

"Egypt's new constitution should be built upon the solid foundation of what I call the four pillars of a free and just society," Allen wrote in an opinion column Wednesday for Politico. "When I served as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I saw that these principles are at the heart of every successful free society."

"The first pillar is freedom of religion," Allen said, which we have in our First Amendment. "The second pillar is freedom of expression," he said, also in the First Amendment.

"The third pillar is private ownership of property," he advised, which is in our Fifth Amendment's due-process clause. "The fourth pillar is the rule of law," said Allen, who, if he returns to the Senate, still has a chance to be the first Jewish presidential nominee, at least according to Jewish law. (His mother was, as he found out just a few years ago, from a very prominent Tunisian Jewish family.) Allen was widely seen as a strong contender for the 2008 nomination until that unfortunate "macaca" thing derailed him in 2006.

This is all pretty fanciful. The senator's belief in private ownership of property is well enough documented, though with scant indication of consideration for the responsibilities or obligations of property owners. And again, while he seems well acquainted with the ways in which religions he approves of can insist on being allowed to abuse religious freedom in the interest of compromising, if not actually destroying, democracy, his record on supporting the freedom of religions he's not fond of is kind of dismal.

As for freedom of expression and the rule of law, like most of today's wingnut partisans, he believes in freedom of expression only for people he agrees with and doesn't believe in the rule of law at all, unless you count using the law as a weapon of the powerful against the powerless. Surely if there's anything we've learned in the wake of the economic meltdown, it's that the rich and powerful simply aren't subject to any rule of law.

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