grinninfoole

that I heard about from Mark Evanier's blog, http://www.newsfromme.com/, which I read every day. It seems that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson in a public meeting with minority housing developers told those people that he had rejected the application of an otherwise worthy candidate for a HUD contract because the applicant told Jackson that he didn't like George W. Bush. Here's a link to a news story about it: http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/05/08/story1.html

And here's a link to an official HUD statement about it: http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=2006-05-10statement.cfm

in which Jackson basically says 'no,no, just kidding.' Of course, even if he didn't deny someone a contract for political reasons (and since he volunteered the information in the first place, I think his denial is a lie), he still told this story to roomful of applicants, who probably got the message, fictional or not.