Report Says Partisanship Reigned in Justice Department Hiring Program

[RedEarth]

Source: Washington Post

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.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062301796.html?nav=rss_politics

[Lasher]

1. I guess the Heritage Foundation handled all the applications.

So Justice was loaded up with wingnuts for 5 years. What's going to be done during the next administration to counter this imbalance?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Good question. Wingnut "Mission Accomplished" at the DOJ. nt

[Lasher]

15. Report Sees Illegal Hiring Practices at Justice Department

This headline has more meaning, Mom.

Report Sees Illegal Hiring Practices at Justice Department

WASHINGTON -- Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

The shift began in 2002, when advisers to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft restructured the honors program in response to what some officials saw as a liberal tilt in recruiting young lawyers from elite law schools like Harvard and Yale. While the recruitment was once controlled largely by career officials in each section who would review applications, political officials in the department began to assume more control, rejecting candidates with liberal or Democratic affiliations “at a significantly higher rate” than those with Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

The shift appeared to accelerate in 2006, under then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with two aides on the screening committee — Michael Elston and Esther Slater McDonald — singled out for particular criticism. The blocking of applicants with liberal credentials appeared to be a particular problem in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which has seen an exodus of career employees in recent years as the department has pursued a more conservative agenda in deciding what types of cases to bring.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/24cnd-justice.html?hp

Emphasis mine.

These wingnut moles will be around to corrupt justice for the next 30 years, unless they are rooted out. And even if anyone is convicted of a crime it will be a slap on the wrist - to be pardoned before Junior heads for the pig farm, for sure. I wonder if they can be let go if it is proved that Civil Service requirements were bypassed during their hiring.

[DeepModem Mom]

18. You're right! The word "illegal," when used there, puts the whole thing in a different category...

of chicanery. ILLEGAL chicanery. I agree with you, though. Bringing this cabal to justice is probably a pipe dream.

And the question of rooting the partisans out is a sticky one. I don't know if, or how, that could be accomplished.

[Lasher]

19. OK so we do the same thing for 8 years.

After 8 years our guy in charge cops a plea for jaywalking, then gets a pardon and the Medal of Freedom. Oh, who am I kidding? Democrats can't even get by with getting a blowjob from a consenting adult while Republicans do juse about everything else with impunity.

[underpants]

14. The RNC/GOP basically has installed sleeper cells at DoJ and Homeland Security

Not only will they be able to leak actual material out but they also will be official leaks of fake information.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. K&R

[indepat]

3. Surely partisanship did not reign in the Justice Department hiring program for if partisanship

reigned in the Justice Department hiring program, a mockery would be made of the equal justice under the law doctrine. But silly me, everything this cabal does makes a mockery of government of, by, and for the people, the land of the free and home of the brave, and all else sacred. :D

[Hugin]

5. Just wait until they take a look around and realize the Partisanship was Govt wide...

If you recall the Right Wing Partisans ran all three branches there for a spell.

[tom_paine]

6. This is no surprise; much like what the Nazis did.

But it's nice to get confirmation of what we already know is going on.

Nothing less than the Bushification/Nazification of our entire system from top to bottm, so that we Americans have no recourse, no aspect of society that has not been Bushified/Nazified.

Thanks to our Congressional Democrats, replaying the role ofthe German Social Democrats to Bush's Hitler, I am almost certain that, even IF Obama is allowed to ascend the Imperial Throne, these things are too far gone already to stop.

After all, all of those Bushie Comissars that have been appointed now have government "job protections" that the rest of us do not have, and so won't be easy to fire the way they were hired...simply because of who they are.

I also read that the Bushies were even now converting DOJ and the rest ofthe executive agencies so that policial appointees BECOME non-appointable civil service jobs, so that Obama also won;t be able to de-Bushify.

I have to say, the Bushies have shown true evil genius here and with the rest of their operation to destroy the American Republic.

Step #1, of course, is getting past Diebold and the massive, often openly performed, Bush Electoral Fraud and Minority Vote Suppression Operation, so that Obama gets on the Imperial Throne.

This will not be easy, unless Obama's lead is 20% or greater in the polls, as I believe taht the Bushies can effect a 10-15% swing with their ops, after so long of getting away with it and even having the Democrats suppress the investigations when the Bushie Ops are caught redhanded, like they were in FL-13 in 2006.

But that's step#1. If we don't do that, then this nation is finished. A Bushie Tyranny forever or at least until many horrors cause it to fall a long time from now.

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. And what you describe is precisely why this era will be remembered

as worse than the McCarthy era. Because you know the purpose behind putting all those known entities into positions that were suppose to be apolitical, was to begin programs of political persecution.

[Pavlovs DiOgie]

7. It's not surprising

but it is infuriating!

[boilinmad]

8. Train the little pigs.....

....and when they're fat enough, let them partake in the shitty, muddy pigsty that is the Republican political machine. gross

[pattmarty]

9. NOOOOOOOOOOOO, say it ain't fucking so!!!!!!!!

[ForPeace]

11. I'm shocked ...

shocked I tell you!

[tanyev]

12. This country cannot move forward without Debushification!

[underpants]

13. NYT-Report Sees Illegal Hiring Practices at Justice Dept

WASHINGTON -- Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/24cnd-justice.html?hp

[Lasher]

17. I see you found it before I did, Underpants.

I posted the same article upthread after you posted it here. Think I'll leave it there, hope you don't mind.

This headline is a tad more descriptive, ya think?

[underpants]

20. Yaaaaaaaaaay

:hi:

[Lasher]

21. Is if football season yet?

Wanna talk about the Fiesta Bowl?

Maybe I'll look in on the sports forum.

Edit: With respect to RedEarth for highjacking the thread, I think it's cooling off now.

[xxqqqzme]

16. From out here in the hinterland, I guessing this

practice was SOP for ALL departments when it came to recruitment & hiring - it's how we got falwell U graduate - goodling - making 'recommendations; it's how we got a book @ the Grand Canyon gift shop saying the Grand Canyon is 5000 years old.