There Was Smoke — and Fire

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/opinion/29tue1.html?ref=opinion

It was hardly news that President Bush’s Justice Department has been illegally politicized, but it was important that the Justice Department finally owned up to that sorry state of affairs. An internal investigation released on Monday found that the department’s top staff routinely took politics and ideology into account in filling nonpolitical positions — and lied about it.

The details of what the investigators found were appalling, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s response was disgracefully lukewarm. If he hopes to leave office with any sort of reputation for integrity, he needs to get serious about punishing this sort of wrongdoing.

(snip)
Despite these incriminating findings, the report is disappointing for what it omits. Did these hiring practices have any impact on the handling of political cases — like those involving phony charges of election fraud — or its prosecution of individuals? What role did White House officials, including Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, play in the politicization?

And what about former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose memory went so conveniently fuzzy under questioning by Congress? It strains credulity to believe that a functionary like Ms. Goodling could act so brazenly unless she knew that she was doing what her bosses wanted.