Know any examples of Bush, Cheney or Rove cheating when young?
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I'm in the final stages of finishing a book tracing Bush-Rove-Cheney's history of cheating, breaking laws and political dirty tricks. Many books have pointed out for the historical record the accomplished liars these officials are; I'm taking it a step farther by showing what accomplished cheaters they are.
I'm going all the way back to how Bush cheated at sandlot baseball games as a kid, how Rove cheated during high school political debates and how Cheney cheated in college at Yale by somehow passing tests without attending class.
I'm looking for other examples of how this gang took shortcuts and engaged in cheating during their younger days. I have a lot of examples of how they did so as adults - I'm looking for more on when they were young.
For instance, does anyone know anyone who can attest to Bush, Rove or Cheney using another student's test to make a better grade in school or getting the test beforehand from a friend or fraternity? Has anyone read about anything like that?
The intro and first chapter of my book is online at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/cheat.html
The following is a brief excerpt from the first chapter:
Even though Bush had so-so grades that should not have allowed him to get accepted to Yale, his father's and grandfather's standings at that Ivy League institution were all he needed. The dean at Phillips even point-blank told Bush he would not get into Yale. But with help from his family, especially his U.S. senator grandfather, Prescott, Bush was allowed to attend Yale. Friends said Bush was "shocked" to get in there.
Rather than try to improve his grades and prove he belonged, Bush lobbied to become president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, where he conceived the illegal idea to actually brand pledges. Forming the Greek letter "Delta" from a coat hanger, Bush would heat the wire and then burn the backsides of pledges during their initiation rituals.
The Yale Daily News called the frat-house brandings "sadistic and obscene." Despite photographic evidence in the paper to the contrary, Bush, who never had himself branded, told The New York Times that the scarring was "only a cigarette burn."
Several of his victims who were branded said otherwise. One pledge told the Yale newspaper that he was beaten, and the branding was almost a relief. "By that time, my body was so numb that the iron felt good - like a match being held close to my body," he said. "Despite Yale's Ivy sophistication, pledging a fraternity at Yale is often a degrading, sadistic and obscene process."
The 1967 article detailed how pledges had to sit with their heads between their legs for two to five hours and were kicked if they as much as moved or even coughed. The Yale fraternity board fined Bush's frat, and the brandings stopped. In a Yale article in 2005, Albert Evans, president of the Inter-Fraternity Council in 1967 and Bush acquaintance, admitted what Bush did was illegal. "What DKE was doing was clearly outside the rules, and they were sanctioned for that," Evans said.
Bush also lobbied hard to get into the Skull and Bones Society, a secret elite club that practiced weird initiation rituals that included being forced to sit naked in a tomb and reveal sexual histories. Bush received the name "Magog" in the Skull and Bones cult because he had the most extensive sexual experience of all the initiates. Many in the moralistic crowd Bush would later solicit votes from considered premarital sex to be "cheating against God."
On the athletic field, Bush could not live up to his father's prowess. So he apparently took a few shortcuts there, as well. A photo published in a Yale yearbook shows Bush on the rugby field sucker-punching an opponent, as well as illegally tackling above the shoulders and leaving his feet. The caption says, "George Bush delivers illegal, but gratifying, right hook to opposing ball carrier."
At Yale, Bush was actually arrested for violating certain laws. In 1966, police nabbed him for stealing a Christmas decoration from a store display that he hung on his frat house. Police booked Bush on a misdemeanor charge but later dropped it after one his father's friends intervened - a familiar pattern in Bush's life.
The following year, Bush was arrested by campus police for pulling down the goal posts at Princeton while celebrating a Yale football win. The campus police let him and others involved go after telling them to leave town.
He also tried to get some frat brothers to help him steal the United Way sign in New Haven, though they did not follow through on that theft. "He was the best at egging other people into schemes, like Tom Sawyer," Robert Beebe, a DKE brother who compared Bush to the John Belushi character in Animal House, told Minutaglio.
Several former Yale students told Kitty Kelley and Erica Jong that they did more than drink with Bush - they sold cocaine or snorted it with Bush back then. One said he did not feel right about "blowing George's cover because I was doing the same thing."
Thanks for any tips......
Jackson Thoreau is a Washington, D.C.-area journalist/writer. His latest book, "Born to Cheat: How Bush, Cheney, Rove & Co. Broke the Rules, From the Sandlot to the White House," debuted at the Take Back America conference in June 2007. More info on (more...)
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