Targeting Target/West Seattle/Wed March 8/3:45 pm: Officer Wolfs reports: "...Suspect was seen on the security video entering Target and selecting handfuls of DVD/PSP games, walking to another aisle and concealing them in a black plastic bag that was in his pocket... At one point, the suspect was observed taking a pair of scissors from his pocket and cutting an MP3 player from the display rack. [He] then walked to the front of the store, stopping for a moment at the front cash-register area, and then walked past all points of sale. No attempt was made to pay for the items. Total $642.70. Store security was able to stop the suspect outside and place him into custody without incident."

Officer Wolfs's report would have easily escaped my attention had it not been for another theft that took place on January 2 at a Target store in Gaithersburg, Maryland. According to the pages of Time magazine: "[The loss prevention manager] spotted a suspicious man [return into] the store with an empty Target bag in a shopping cart. [He apparently had placed the items he had just purchased into his car.] The man was then seen selecting merchandise throughout the store and placing items in the Target bag. The man then went to guest services where he produced a receipt [for the items he put in his car] and received a refund for the items he had just selected from the store shelves. After receiving the refund he left the store without paying for the additional merchandise in the shopping cart. He was apprehended by the store employee." The "suspicious man" in this statement is Claude A. Allen, former top domestic policy adviser to President Bush, former rising star in the Republican Party, and former living/leading symbol of how to be a successful black conservative. Allen, who got his start as Jesse Helms's protégé, was by no means poor (his White House job paid $161,000), and so this theft, as well as the others (he stole $5,000 worth of Target's merchandise last year), can only be explained as a symptom of a mental illness that plagues the entire body of the present administration.