Federal Justice: Spinning wheels(on Civil Rights)

[maddezmom]

Federal Justice: Spinning wheels
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

As President Bush props up Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, scandals around the administration's politicization of the Justice Department continue to grow.

Last year's firing of high-performing U.S. attorneys, including Seattle's John McKay, underlines the changes under a highly ideological right-wing leadership in the department that seems to see law enforcement as an election tool. None of the problems have been more serious than in the Civil Rights Division, which brought no discrimination cases on behalf of black or American Indian voters in a five-year period.

This week, a Seattle P-I report on post-9/11 changes in federal law enforcement showed the FBI overall has pursued far fewer civil rights cases of all kinds than in the past. After FBI agents investigate, their cases go to Justice Department attorneys, who decide whether to file cases. A retired agent told the P-I, "A lot of us felt like they were causing us to spin our wheels on civil rights cases."

The administration deliberately has transformed Justice's Civil Rights Division, which enjoyed bipartisan respect for decades. The debasing of the division stemmed from both ideology and resource shifting, which largely may have served as an opportunity to accelerate change. A 2005 Washington Post report on upheaval in the division pointed to low morale among professional staffers, who believed the administration wanted people who shared its views on civil rights. The Post also noted many attorneys had been handed immigration and deportation cases, which could reflect resource choices.Last year, The Boston Globe found that Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, abandoned a tradition of non-political hiring of the division's attorneys and inserted political appointees into the screening of applicants in 2002. As a result, most hires had no civil rights experience and were more likely to be members of the Federalist Society and other conservative groups.

more:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/313432_justed.html