Rice

"As I was telling my husb...as I was telling President Bush." - Bachelorette Condoleezza Rice's tongue slips during a dinner party. New York magazine, April 26th

The Bush Administration suffered still more resignations today: CNN and MSNBC reported this morning that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson will both resign. The two resignations are the latest in a series over recent days as Bush prepares for a second term. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham all said on Monday that they will leave. Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Attorney General John Ashcroft announced their resignations last week, meaning six of Bush's 15 Cabinet members are leaving. At least three of the Cabinet chairs are expected to go to White House insiders, reflecting Bush's desire to send only trusted lieutenants to implement his policies and to extend his influence government-wide.

In this regard, Bush has chosen National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Powell as America's top diplomat. Rice, 50, has been one of Bush's longest-serving and most loyal cabinet members. She had worked at the National Security Council for former President Bush and went on to be provost of Stanford University before working in the current president's 2000 campaign. It had been rumored that she was considering a return to California or was hoping to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

You have to wonder what someone as talented and as intelligent as Ms. Rice is doing in an administration that favors faith over facts, that cannot admit to (or learn from) its own mistakes, that is becoming increasingly insulated and removed from the rest of the world. Powell has looked extremely downbeat for a while now, as his future political aspirations have been tarnished by his association with this administration (if he had it to do over, do you really believe he would still have given the "anthrax" address to the UN?). Why would Rice want to be Secretary of State for an administration like this one? Who is she really?

"As I was telling my husb...as I was telling President Bush......" Aaron McGruder might have had it right. Last year, McGruder, the creator of the "Boondocks" comic strip, made Rice's love life the topic of his comic. "Maybe if there was a man in the world who Condoleezza truly loved, she wouldn't be so hell-bent to destroy it," one of his characters speculates in a strip. The Washington Post pulled the series on Rice, which ran some five days. The Cincinnati Enquirer dropped the strip altogether.

At an anniversary dinner for the Nation magazine, McGruder caused the mostly anti-war audience discomfort when he said, "I've met Condoleezza Rice and called her a murderer to her face." On the nationally syndicated television show "Black Forum," he repeated the charge, arguing that Rice, as one of the administration's "biggest hawks," advised the president on a war that led to the "slaughter of innocent people in Iraq." Some of the panelists assembled in the Washington studio winced at the remarks. The low-key McGruder, 29, asserted that he has a right to his opinion.

"She's a murderer because I believe she's a murderer," he said coolly.