(2007-04-16) Maher On Competence

Bill Maher on Competence (Professionalism). You know how whenever there's a major George W Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screw-ups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because of the U.S. attorneys scandal (Attorney Gate), was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College - home of the "Fighting Christies," who wait-listed me, the bastards - and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's Law School. I'm not kidding, Pat Robertson, the man who said gay people at Disney World would cause "earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," has a law school. It's called Regent. Regent University School of Law, and it shares a campus with Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network studios. U.S. News and World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn't get into the University Of Phoenix.... But there's more! As there inevitably is with the Bush administration. Turns out she's not the only one. Since 2001, 150 graduates of Regent University have been hired by the Bush administration.