http://www.capitolhi...

And I don't have time to do a good diary on the column. It's a great piece. I hope somebody will do a diary.

I have good reason to believe the "N-word" allegations about Allen.  Reading and hearing about the recent allegations of George Allen using derogatory terms about people of different ethnicities doesn't surprise me. I knew George well enough to be on a first name basis with him back in the early 90's when I was active in the Charlottesville Republican Committee. I was secretary and treasurer of that committee at different times. We even had the party headquarters in the basement of George's law office in those days.

We held meetings occasionally at a local motel conference room in town. The now defunct Mt. Vernon Motel. One evening, George attended our committee meeting there. In an adjoining conference room there were Mexican-Americans who were selling western ware. As I stood talking with George and the then committee chairman during a break making small talk the chairman suggested that George may want to look at some of the cowboy boots for sale in the other room as we knew of his affinity for the footwear. His response floored me. He looked at us both and said in a condescending tone that he would not buy anything from those "wetbacks." I looked at the chairman and he looked at me in total shock. The conversation quickly wrapped up and I walked away in total disbelief at what I had just heard. As this was an actual personal experience for me I am very inclined to believe the current allegations.

Sincerely,

Forrest R. Cook

-- FORREST R COOK

Maybe someone can check this out?  Not many google listings for this name.

I played HS football with George Allen at PV high in Los Angeles. I remember the graffiti incident well, but getting faught didn't seem to change him. He wore a lapel with a confederate flag for our yearbook picture along with one other student. California is not southern and wearing the confederate flag for a yearbook picture in 1970 Los Angeles was like flipping off black people. I remember him proudly waving little confederate flags during our football award ceremony. His dad was obviously embarrassed but just let the kid alone. From what I've read about his college years and association with white supremacist groups, he hasn't changed much.

-- Keith Ensminger

Another one to check out

The Allen camp released a statement from Allen's first wife refuting Taylor's story. Anne Waddell, who was married to Allen from 1980 to 1984, said she recalled Taylor coming to their home to buy a puppy.

"I can say with absolute certainty that his recollection that George said anything at all that could be considered racially insensitive is completely false," she said. "He would never utter such a word."

Waddell said, "I was the one who fished for the turtles in our pond because they were eating the young goslings. The person who ate the turtles was our neighbor."

Sabato, who made his comments during an interview on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" program on MSNBC, later declined to specifically identify his sources.

"My sources are former classmates who came to me with stories that matched up," Sabato said late Monday night. "I never solicited them. They came to me during the past few months."

Sabato was once closely affiliated with the state Democratic party and worked in the 1970s in the gubernatorial campaigns of Henry E. Howell, a noted liberal. He now is director of U.Va.'s nonpartisan Center for Politics.

We'll see if any of Sabato's sources some forward.

I've also heard that the divorce papers from Allen's first marriage are sealed.  Is that true?  Why?  Maybe Allen would agree to let an independent news reporter look at the documents under seal to verify there is nothing incriminating in them.

I was not surprised by Sen. Allen’s crude remarks aimed at a Democratic campaign worker. Several years ago, while I was engaged in research at the Dickenson County courthouse, I heard that then-Gov. Allen was on his way to a groundbreaking for the new Red Onion prison. A friend and I drove up to the site, not realizing until we arrived that it was a Republican-only event.

Allen was escorted by a politician who, noting our presence, made some comment to him and pointed at us. We stood with a small semi-circle of onlookers waiting to shake Allen’s hand, but he deliberately skipped the two of us and continued shaking hands with others in the line.

He made a few remarks to the crowd and then stood with his back to us, turning once to aim a jet of tobacco spit directly at our feet. Although he had never met us before, he made us well aware of his sentiments. A small incident, yes, but very revealing of his attitude. He did not intend to treat Democrats with the slightest common courtesy.

Following this recent incident, he did not immediately apologize for his comments – he only regretted (or so he says) that the young man was embarrassed by them. George Allen is hardly a representative for all the people.

Kathy Shearer
Emory, Va.

§ 18.2-322. Expectorating in public places.

No person shall spit, expectorate, or deposit any sputum, saliva, mucus, or any form of saliva or sputum upon the floor, stairways, or upon any part of any public building or place where the public assemble, or upon the floor of any part of any public conveyance, or upon any sidewalk abutting on any public street, alley or lane of any town or city.

Any person violating any provision of this section shall be guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor.

(Code 1950, § 32-69; 1975, cc. 14, 15.)

"I never really understood George," Shelton said. "He has a disregard for a lot of people. "He chewed tobacco and would walk down the hall in Newcombe Hall without a cup, spitting on the floor and on the walls because he knew somebody would be there to clean it up - black janitors. It was disgusting."

Another Allen teammate has come forward to corroborate the deer head incident:

Sept. 27, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- A former college football teammate of Sen. George Allen's has confirmed details of a controversial hunting trip in the early 1970s, during which Allen is alleged to have placed a severed deer head in a mailbox that he believed to be owned by a black family.

On Sunday, Salon reported that Ken Shelton, a former teammate of Allen's who works as a radiologist in North Carolina, claimed that Allen asked after a hunting trip for directions to a neighborhood populated by black residents. Shelton said Allen then drove him and another teammate, Billy Lanahan, to the area and put the severed head of a deer they had killed into a mailbox.

George Beam, a nuclear engineering company manager who lives outside Lynchburg, Va., now says he can confirm parts of that story. Beam, who played football with Allen, said he remembers Lanahan, who is now deceased, describing the hunting trip with Allen and Shelton.

"We were sitting around drinking beer," Beam said in an interview Wednesday morning, recalling the conversation with Lanahan. "Billy said, 'George and Kenny and I went hunting, and we decided at some time to cut off this deer head and stick it in a mailbox.'" 

Beam said he does not remember Lanahan saying that the incident was racially motivated. He also said Lanahan did not specify who had the idea to put the deer head in the mailbox.

***
Beam said he was motivated to speak to a reporter about his memory because of recent attacks against Shelton's integrity by people close to the Allen campaign, a group that includes several former teammates. "I knew Kenny Shelton, and his reputation in my opinion is irreproachable," Beam said Wednesday morning, adding that he had not spoken to Shelton in decades.

Lanahan died this year at the age of 53. His aunt, Martha Belle Chisholm, told Salon last week that Lanahan's family owned land near Bumpass, Va., about 50 miles east of the University of Virginia campus, where Allen played football in college. Chisholm said she remembered Lanahan speaking highly of Allen.

Beam played as a quarterback and a wide receiver on the University of Virginia football team during the 1972, '73 and '74 seasons. Beam said he lived with Lanahan between 1971 and 1973. Beam described himself as a political independent who leans "more Republican than anything," and has not yet decided whether to vote for Allen in November.

  In college, Beam said, he did not know Allen well, and had no memory of Allen using racial epithets. "He was a transplant from California," said Beam, who grew up in Clarkesville, Va. "I remember him appearing to act more Southern than people who had grown up in the South."

In the Post Wednesday, Chris LaCivita, a consultant for the Allen campaign, suggested that Shelton had fabricated the deer head story because a similar incident had been reported in North Carolina in January. Shelton said he had never heard of the North Carolina report, and called LaCivita's allegation ridiculous.

One other former teammate, George Korte, was quoted in an Allen campaign press release directly attacking Shelton, saying the radiologist had "deep-rooted problems with self identity." Korte offered nothing to back up his charge beyond a different memory of Allen's behavior.

On Sunday, Salon reported that two other teammates, who asked that their names be withheld for fear of retribution from the Allen camp, also remembered Allen using a racial epithet and displaying racist attitudes. Since then, two more acquaintances of Allen's have come forward to claim that they heard Allen use racial epithets to describe blacks. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Ellen G. Hawkins, an active Democrat and housewife in Virginia, remembers Allen badmouthing a black football player and using a racial slur more than once at a party in 1976. Allen's campaign manager called this account "another false accusation."

The Times, the Post and the New Republic have also reported that Christopher Taylor, an anthropology professor in Alabama who identifies himself as a Democrat, remembers Allen using the word "nigger" to describe black residents near his Virginia home in the early 1980s. The Allen campaign charged that Taylor was lying. "This guy is not credible period," said LaCivita, in an interview with the Post.