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In Seeking Pardon For Swindler, Bachmann Convicts Herself of Illiteracy

06/24/2011 | Brices Crossroads

Posted on by Brices Crossroads

Michele Bachmann's efforts in 2007-8 to have Drug Dealer and Money Launderer Frank Vennes pardoned for his 1987 convictions have begun to receive some light scrutiny in the media. Some embarrassing details have emerged, including the fact that, while Bachmann was lobbying hard to secure a pardon for him from President Bush, Vennes himself was engaged in a brand new, massive $3.65 billion ponzi scheme, for which he was recently indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. Worse yet, Vennes and his family had donated money to Bachmann--a lot of money--in the 2006 and 2008 campaign cycles, $27,400 to be exact, making Vennes her largest donor by far. The most charitable thing one can say about this affair is that it showed colossally poor judgment on Bachmann's part. The propinquity of the donations and her efforts to secure a pardon could suggest a darker, even improper, motive, if the pardon efforts were proven to be a quid pro quo for the campaign cash. See the link below if you are interested in any more of the sordid details.

LINK

What struck me about the Vennes matter was not that Bachmann exercised poor judgment (which she certainly did) or that her lobbying on behalf of Vennes so soon after his huge donations to her were unethical and created at least the appearance of impropriety (which they certainly have). It was none of those things that I found so egregious, because politicians typically engage in such shenanigans on a daily basis, and Michele Bachmann is nothing if not a typical politician. What really struck me about the whole affair, and has been heretofore overlooked, is the letter Bachmann penned on Congressional stationery to the Pardon Attorney at the United States Department of Justice. By all means, read it and draw your own conclusions:

The specter of the lamestream media baying at the moon and salivating over the prospect of a veritable treasure trove of malapropisms within Sarah Palin's 24,000 emails made me wonder about Bachmann's talents as a wordsmith. To pique my curiosity further, the same lamestream media that was so sure it would find multiple "silver bullets" of incoherence within Palin's emails has pronounced Bachmann not only "coherent" and "disciplined" but downright "articulate." (Meghan Daum, LA Times, 6/23/2011) To their chagrin, Palin's emails turned out to be written more competently than most CEOs, scoring an impressive 8.5 on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test on which Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech was an 8.8 and the Gettysburg Address was a 9.1. Indeed Palin's routine emails were more competently composed, according to this measure, than was Barack Obama's State of the Union Address, which came in at 7.7. And Bachmann? Well, I would love to have the Flesch-Kincaid test applied to her letter to the Pardon Attorney, a high ranking Justice Department official appointed by the President and subject to Senate confirmation. How, I wonder, would it score? Let's take a look at it, piece by piece.

Her third sentence is not only awkward, but also an unsupported non sequitur:

"As a U.S. Representative, I am confident of Mr Vennes' successful rehabilitation and that a pardon will be good for the neediest of society."

How, one might wonder, does her status as a U.S. Representative make her "confident" of Mr. Vennes' rehabilitation? Evidently she intended to remind the Pardon Attorney of her office, fearing that perhaps he had not noticed the letter head. After this bit of gratuitous horn blowing, Bachmann stumbles through the remainder of this awkward sentence in two parts, but without the same, parallel grammatical structure:

"I am confident of...and that"

This grammatical error, known as faulty parallelism, is rather more common among elementary school students than Congressmen, especially those who who constantly bray about their two law degrees and their experience as a "tax attorney for the IRS".

The next sentence, if you can call it that, is at once inane and downright painful to read:

"Granting a pardon to Mr. Vennes should be considered because pardons were intended to restore people to society like Mr. Vennes; people who have demonstrated true reformation and for whom mercy is due because the legal system cannot deliver a morally acceptable result."

The first part of it is an incomplete, circular thought, punctuated with a semicolon. The second part is an incomplete sentence. In between she opines that "mercy is due" when in fact mercy is never "due." If mercy were due, it would be justice, not mercy. And she inexplicably charges that the legal system in Vennes' case "cannot deliver a morally acceptable result." Is there some thought behind such a charge? How is it that the legal system failed to deliver a morally acceptable result? Vennes was convicted on his own guilty plea of crimes for which the government had overwhelming evidence. How was his conviction not a "morally acceptable result?" Anyone who would make such a statement does not understand the meaning of the phrase "morally acceptable result." Her use of the English language is as imprecise as her syntax is mangled.

The next sentence is no better:

"Mr Vennes' application shows he is a just recipient of a pardon"

Wrong again, Michele. He is not the just recipient of a pardon, since he had not yet received it (and, happily, he never did). What you meant to say was that he would be the just recipient of a pardon. Michele Bachmann, let me introduce you to the subjunctive mood. You should have met in the fifth grade, but I suppose it's better to meet late than never!

The letter meanders on, a string of words in search of a coherent thought. At points the Congresswoman waxes profound:

"So why does Mr. Vennes need a pardon if he is so successful? So he can help more people than he does."

She goes on to elaborate on the utility of a pardon for Mr Vennes and how a pardon will free him "to help so many more":

"Mr Vennes still encounters the barriers of his past and especially in the area of finance loan documents."

Indeed, those pesky prior money laundering convictions sure do get in the way of your ability to borrow money from banks for the needy (or for other worthy purposes like...ponzi schemes?). It raises the question, however: Does Bachmann believe it licit to go into debt in order to fund charitable activities? She notes in the third paragraph that, in just the previous three years, Vennes has directed over 10.7 million dollars to the "neediest in our society" (not to mention the $27,400 he steered into her campaign coffers). It does not appear that he was in dire need of loans for charitable activities or much of anything else.

The letter finally ends with this sentence:

"Knowing that pardons have been decreasingly granted , I am asking that courage be mustered to do justice for Mr. Vennes."

Decreasingly granted? This sounds like the syntax of a third grader. How about: "While I understand that pardons overall have declined of late..." There are any number of concise ways to express this thought. Bachmann chose none of them. I have seen many letters from Congressmen and Senators, and this one, which incidentally addresses a very important subject, is by far the least articulate of any of them.

If Sarah Palin penned such a ferociously illiterate missive, it would be on the front page of the New York Times as Exhibit A for her incompetence and incoherence. Yet Michele Bachmann, now the darling of CNN, the L.A. Times, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post and Chris Matthews of MSNBC, is called both "coherent" and "articulate," in spite of this stark evidence to the contrary. Ask yourselves why these two are treated differently.

After reading her mangled syntax, poor word usage and incoherent ramblings, I shudder at the thought of the Congresswoman from Minnesota turned loose upon an Inaugural Address. Fortunately, the chances of that are even slimmer than Mr. Vennes' current pardon possibilities.



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To: Brices Crossroads

We could do worse than Michelle Bachmann as President; we could have a half wit with a death wish for the country — oh, we do!



by 2 posted onby Rembrandt (.. AND the donkey you rode in on.)

To: Brices Crossroads

I wish the bastards in the liberal lamestream “media” would do this much digging on their boy Barry. His ass would probably be in prison.



by 3 posted onby FlingWingFlyer (When the going gets tough, the tough check themselves into "rehab".)

To: Brices Crossroads

I welcome frontrunner Michelle Bachman!



To: Brices Crossroads

Bachmann is now out for me. At first I welcomed her candidacy and for a brief moment was my #1 choice, but some bad things have come out about her and she isn’t all she claims to be. She needs to get out. BUT.......why the hell doesn’t the media do thei to old Barry? They have plenty of dirt on him that they won’t report. Sucks.



To: Brices Crossroads

If I were a top Bachmann campaign strategist, I couldn’t imagine a better PR piece. The only logical reaction is: “Huh? Is this all they got?” None of her errors should embarrass. Only the twit who thinks they are important (and lives in his Mom’s basement) would think them relevant. I’m a Palin supporter first, but this is total nothingness.



To: Brices Crossroads

Well, let’s look at the writings of the current president while he was a member of the Illinois legislature and analyze the grammar. *crickets*



To: Brices Crossroads

I have no idea where anyone got the idea that a law degree conferred some form of superior literacy in the first place. Every lawsuit to which I’ve been a party has been rife with fairly basic errors. I guess the smattering of Latin and archaic usage impresses people. Me, I wanted to proofread it, mark it up in red and send it back to them with a bill for $175.00 an hour. It’s the least they could do for bleeding me dry.



To: GR_Jr.

She needs to get out. Why in hell should give that she leads in the Zogby poll and is second in Rasmussen. Why in hell should give that she leads in the Zogby poll and is second in Rasmussen. I think you should keep you raging hatred for conservative candidates to yourself or go to some liberal website and spew your hatred toward them.



To: RushingWater

She’s not the “frontrunner” in any poll to date and it’s very early days.



To: Brices Crossroads

So..Have you a comment, or are you content to just sit back and snicker as you collect hits to your blog, masquerading as news?



by 11 posted onby ButThreeLeftsDo (FreeRepublic.com. Now, More Than Ever.)

To: GR_Jr.

“Bachmann is now out for me”..

So i presume you will be voting for Obama again?



by 12 posted onby GSP.FAN (Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints.)

To: Brices Crossroads

I highly doubt this was composed by Bachmann herself. I mean, the first half is almost unreadable, and she has an LL.M from William and Mary, and LL.M aren’t just handed out generally. Of course, I’ve seen worse reading college classmates’ research papers. One wonders why they hand out degrees to some of the imbeciles they give them to these days.



To: RegulatorCountry

Paralegals or legal assistants usually write the complaints. The attorneys are supposed to proof them, but often just sign whatever is put in front of them.



To: Brices Crossroads

I am a so-called "Palinista." I have been fighting off crap from the anti-Palin crowd for years. But let me tell you...you are full of crap. If you think this post is positive, well, you couldn't be more wrong. Whose tool are you? Because you're not from our (Palin) side. If you are, I'm ashamed.



To: Brices Crossroads

"Mr Vennes still encounters the barriers of his past and especially in the area of finance loan documents." Indeed, those pesky prior money laundering convictions sure do get in the way of your ability to borrow money from banks Banks should know about past money laundering convictions when they evaluate a loan applicant. Bachmann's pardon would have prevented that. In fact that was the stated purpose of the pardon. Screw the rights of the banks. They can afford a few bad loans. /



To: Brices Crossroads

Do you actually think Michelle Bachmann herself wrote that letter?



To: ilovesarah2012

Color me unimpressed, regardless. Reminds me of an old business partner of mine, several university degrees and from a prominent Tidewater family, couldn’t spell a lick and couldn’t string a coherent sentence together if his life depended upon it. Whenever I’d intervene and berate him for sending out sales proposals in such sad shape, he’d sniff “that’s what secretaries are for.”



To: Brices Crossroads

LOL $25,000 is a lot of money!!! Maybe to a homeless person but in toady's world it is squat. Maybe make a down payment on a new car.



To: RecoveringPaulisto

“I highly doubt this was composed by Bachmann herself. I mean, the first half is almost unreadable, and she has an LL.M from William and Mary, and LL.M arent just handed out generally.” Well, she signed it. And I rather doubt that brand new Congressman is likely to delegate such an important letter (which concerns her biggest donor) on a very sensitive topic (a pardon for serious felonies) to a staffer. If she did, it call into question her judgment. BTW, the fact that she has an LLM means squat. LLMs are routinely handed out at many law schools, even good ones, to undistinguished students. at a very few schools, like NYU in Tax, the LLM means something. At most, it means nothing. Her law degree came from Oral Roberts University, which lost its accreditation the year after she graduated. And I have read many briefs from students who graduate d from the Ivies and can’t string two sentences together. It should surprise no one that a grad of ORU is so challenged.



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