babylonDon

Report Says Partisanship Reigned in Justice Department Hiring Program - washingtonpost.com

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 24, 2008; Page A07

High-ranking political appointees at the Justice Department labored to stock a prestigious hiring program with young conservatives in a five-year-long attempt to reshape the department's ranks, according to an inspector general's report to be released today.

The report will trace the effort to 2002, early in the Bush administration, when key advisers to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft moved to exert more control over the program to hire rookie lawyers and summer interns, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The honors program, which each year places about 150 law school graduates with top credentials in a rotation of Justice jobs, historically had operated under the control of senior career officials. Shifting control of the program to Ashcroft's advisers prompted charges of partisanship from law professors and former government lawyers who had worked under Democratic administrations.

Mark Corallo, a Justice spokesman during Ashcroft's tenure, has said that the overhaul was intended to broaden candidate pools and include students from a range of law schools, not only Ivy League institutions. The strategy persisted until tension among political appointees and career staff members came to a head in mid-2007.
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Corallo said yesterday that Ashcroft, who now runs a consulting firm, will not comment until the report is made public.

Critics in the department had argued that hundreds of high-quality applicants had been rejected because of their ties to left-leaning nonprofit groups or clerkships with Democratic judges and lawmakers, according to correspondence at the time. One Harvard Law School graduate said that when he applied for the honors program a few years ago he was warned by professors and fellow students to remove any liberal affiliations from his résumé.

Concerned Justice employees also raised alarms last year by sending a letter to lawmakers who had been examining whether political considerations led to the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

In response, Justice officials last year said they had returned control over the honors and intern programs to career lawyers.

The report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett is the first in a series of studies investigating the role and reach of political appointees in hiring and enforcement at Justice during the Bush years. The studies, which cover the prosecutor firings, problems in the civil rights division and statements by former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, have been hotly anticipated for months.

The internal audit already has produced one grand jury referral. Federal prosecutors in the District recently issued subpoenas to former employees in Justice's civil rights unit as part of a probe into discrepancies in 2007 congressional testimony by Bradley A. Schlozman, an interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the (illegal) questions was, "Why do you want to serve George W. Bush?"

This is what they do instead of serve the nation's interests.

Despise them.

__________________
“The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."-John Lawton

Heretic

No surprise really....

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

babylonDon

No. It's not a surprise, but it's still a problem. I thought you liked justice and stuff?


Should we be bored with the wholesale criminality this administration has engaged in, because they've done it so pervasively?

__________________
“The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."-John Lawton

Heretic

Yeah, justice. Not injustice. When there's a solution ready to go I'll be interested. We all knew what Jr. did to the injustice department.

We should be wondering why the D.I.N.O.'s continue to enable and appease the right wing to this end.

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

babylonDon

If you're that indifferent, why comment at all?



Oh, yeah. So you can beat that drum again.

It that had anything to do with the subject of the thread, I wouldn't disagree. But it doesn't.

Under the Bush administration, the systematic abuse of power, continues to marginalize and vilify huge numbers of the American populace. Including me. Including you.

Part of the equation, includes a number of congressional Dems, who are either too enamored or intimidated by the historically unmatched power and control they've amassed. Another part is citizens who become discouraged or angry enough to turn their backs on the whole process, because of that. That's every bit as much as much a success to their goals, as any Dem who doesn't oppose them vocally enough.

I identify myself as an American first, and a Democrat way after that. I was raised in an environment that fostered democratic ideals. I haven't lost those ideals, even after becoming cynical about the process.

The air, water, and food is unsafe. The education system is set up to insure that the (evergrowing) poor remain ignorant, and pregnant, without any reasonable hope of medical care or meaningful employment. And they've got media corps, working in conjunction with them, whose job it is to paint those people as lazy and parasitic.

The truth has become elastic, even to those who spend all their time looking for answers to these problems.

If something isn't done about these problems, and soon, the U.S. will have entirely been destroyed as a true democracy. They may have their share of problems, but the Dems currently have the largest army, fighting for the things I believe in. And even at their worst, they don't come within miles of the totalitarianism of the current administration.

It's my feeling that the failure to wrest power from these people, is the same thing as agreeing with them.

__________________
“The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."-John Lawton

HarperLee

No one cares about this!

Bradley Schlozman was brought in to replace a Bush 43 appointee who was axed because he refused to indict an Acorn voters' rights group
four days before the 2004 election. (A few weeks ago there was a possibility that Schlozman would be indicted for prosecutorial misconduct, but I am sure that won't happen.)

John Ashcroft was defeated by a dead man in Missouri in 2000, but weeks later was named Bush 43's AG. I know a person who has seen
Ashcroft speak in tongues in his Pentecostal church. When Ashcroft was a Missouri state officer, he would make state employees stop
what they were doing and listen to his gospel quartet during the lunch hour.

Alberto Gonzales was a product of affirmative action, and a willing, stupid puppet for Karl Rove.
The only experience he had was being 43's
personal attorney in Texas.

I cannot remember the percentage, but many, many of the attorneys in The DOJ since 2001 have been graduates of Pat Robertson's law
school, Regency University, which has only been accredited for a few years. Traditionally those jobs have been plums, and Ivy League law school graduates competed for them.

__________________
Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

babylonDon

Right.

They're not just politicizing these necessary positions, they're dumbing them down.

__________________
“The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."-John Lawton

HarperLee

More about Pat's Law School, from The Boston Globe, April 8, 2007:

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school
Grads influential in Justice Dept.
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 8, 2007

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.

"Sin is so appealing because it's easy and because it's fun," the law student warned.

Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change the world," has worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation, fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn't pass the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League teams in national law student competitions.

But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight -- and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations.

Documents show that Goodling, who has asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Congress, was one of a handful of officials overseeing the firings. She helped install Timothy Griffin , the Karl Rove aide and her former boss at the Republican National Committee, as a replacement US attorney in Arkansas.

And across the political blogosphere, critics have held up Goodling, who declined to be interviewed, as a prime example of the Bush administration subordinating ability to politics in hiring decisions.

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

The Regent law school was founded in 1986, when Oral Roberts University shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to Robertson's Bible-based college in Virginia. It was initially called "CBN University School of Law" after the televangelist's Christian Broadcasting Network, whose studios share the campus and which provided much of the funding for the law school. (The Coors Foundation is also a donor to the university.) The American Bar Association accredited Regent 's law school in 1996.

Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent's government school, Kay Coles James , to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management -- essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.

"We've had great placement," said Jay Sekulow , who heads a non profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at lowering barriers between church and state. "We've had a lot of people in key positions."

Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling, joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

The graduate from Regent -- which is ranked a "tier four" school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place -- was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration imposed greater political control over career hiring.

than its image.

*******

Seven years ago, 60 percent of the class of 1999 -- Goodling's class -- failed the bar exam on the first attempt. (Goodling's performance was not available, though she is admitted to the bar in Virginia.) The dismal numbers prompted the school to overhaul its curriculum and tighten admissions standards.
****
Adding to Regent's prominence, its course on "Human Rights, Civil Liberties, and National Security" is co taught by one of its newest professors: Ashcroft.

Link to complete Boston Globe article:

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school - The Boston Globe

__________________
Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

ibex

As insidious as this is, it will never be deemed newsworthy by most of the corporate MSM, for the superficial reason that it's a complicated subject seemingly far removed from the lives of the average, apathetic American. It kills me that I know so many east coast Republicans who would shrug this business of the complete politicization of the DOJ as an instrument to mangle the Constitution as no big deal, and continue to vote for and support the party directly responsible for this because of some ingrained fear of "liberals" who will raise their taxes.

HarperLee

Which goes back to median I.Q., quality of education, and total lack of curiosity of our citizenry.

When the Born Again Bush appointee -- who was later axed by Bush -- began in my city in 2001, it was pretty clear he wasn't a rocket scientist. He brought along his own First Assistant, also a Born Again, apparently a prerequisite for any position in Ashcroft's DOJ.

The first Christmas the First Assistant wanted to put a nativity scene in the reception area of the U. S. Attorney's office. A brilliant attorney in the office decided to play with her, and sent her email suggesting that the nativity scene might be offensive to the Jewish people in the office. She emailed back that there were no Jewish people in the office. He emailed back, "Au contraire, John Doe (alias) is Jewish.

She immediately went to the Jewish attorney's office, knocked on his door, and told him very nicely that she had never seen a Jew before.

This is the kind of brilliance and sophistication that Bush and the boys corrupted our justice system with.

Link from my paper today about what happened in our office:

www.kansascity.com | 07/28/2008 | Former U.S. attorney named in Justice report

__________________
Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home