{"id":2166,"date":"2004-07-21T09:27:59","date_gmt":"2004-07-21T14:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2166.html"},"modified":"2004-07-21T09:27:59","modified_gmt":"2004-07-21T14:27:59","slug":"moon-mystery-solved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/moon-mystery-solved\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon mystery solved"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were bound to find out eventually who reserved a Senate office building room for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s recent “coronation<\/a>.” Kudos to the Washington Post for solving<\/a> the mystery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sen. John W. Warner’s office acknowledged yesterday that the Virginia Republican arranged for religious activists to use a Senate office building last March for a ceremony in which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be “reborn as new persons.”<\/p>\n

The senator did not attend the coronation-like ceremony or realize it would involve Moon, a controversial figure who spent 18 months in prison in the 1980s for tax fraud, said Warner spokesman John Ullyot. “Our office felt misled” after news accounts described a long ceremony in which Moon and his wife were crowned as leaders of international peace, he said.<\/p>\n

Many private groups use Senate office buildings for receptions and meetings, but they must obtain a senator’s approval. The Senate Rules and Administration Committee has declined to reveal who approved the use of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for the March 23 ceremony, and a key organizer said last month the question was “shrouded in mystery.” Warner’s office acknowledged its role yesterday when asked for details by The Washington Post.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, the “we were deceived” defense. That’s a pretty common excuse<\/a> for a lot of lawmakers caught up in this mess. <\/p>\n

Also interesting was John Gorenfeld’s observation<\/a> that this wasn’t Warner’s first brush with Moon.
\n<\/p>\n

This isn’t the Virginia Republican’s first brush with Moon, Inc. In 2002, he was moved to send a proclamation congratulating Mrs. Moon on some Messiah-related program activities, for no immediately apparent reason. <\/p>\n

However, a Unification Church essayist has also accused Warner of voting for “Satan’s Mathematics” by supporting sex equality (and, by extension, “tragedies caused by weak women”) in the army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There remains, however, some question about whether Warner was the only senator to help Moon with this event.<\/p>\n

In a phone interview yesterday, [Gary L. Jarmin, president of a Moon-related group called Christian Voice] said he requested the Dirksen room on behalf of Christian Voice because the ceremony involved hundreds of people and required an overflow room. A previous Dirksen room request, he said, “was done under the Washington Times Foundation.” Senate rules limit any organization to one room per event.<\/p>\n

Jarmin would not specify which senator approved the foundation’s request, but suggested it was Warner. “The same senator can request two rooms,” he said. “I had to use a different organization to get” the overflow room. <\/p>\n

[Warner spokesman John Ullyot] said the March 11 letter from Christian Voice was “the only request we received” for permission to use a room for the March 23 ceremony. He said he did not know which senator approved the second room.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So maybe Warner had an accomplice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were bound to find out eventually who reserved a Senate office building room for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s recent “coronation.” Kudos to the Washington Post for solving the mystery. Sen. John W. Warner’s office acknowledged yesterday that the Virginia Republican arranged for religious activists to use a Senate office building last March for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}