More Corruption at Mukasey’s Justice Department? - BY Scott Horton

[kpete]

More Corruption at Mukasey’s Justice Department?
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED April 1, 2008

Is the Justice Department the single most corrupt agency on the Washington horizon?

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A Congressional probe has been launched by Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee into how Flores “bypassed the top-scoring bidders for National Juvenile Justice program grants, giving money instead to bidders that its staff ranked far lower,” Youth Today reports.
http://www.youthtoday.org/publication/article.cfm?article_id=949

The probe was requested by Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), who was approached by administrators at Winona State University after the Youth Today story was published. The university’s proposal for its National Child Protection Training Center was ranked fourth by OJJDP staff, with an average score of 96.5, but it didn’t win a grant. The university is in Walz’s district, and he helped get the center $1.2 million in earmarks in the 2008 Justice Department budget, including $446,000 from OJJDP.

So the highly qualified, well-scored contenders didn’t get the grants. But who did? The Juvienation blog reports:
http://juvienation.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/cronyism-at-the-ojjdp/

Meanwhile, Flores handed the bulk of the cash to lower-scoring organizations he deemed his favorites. Word has gotten out among organizations that scored high but didn’t win; some of them are furious and want OJJDP or Congress to explain the process. “We all play by the rules,” said Earl Dunlap, CEO of the National Partnership for Juvenile Services, whose losing bid ranked second out of 129. “The rules for Flores are pretty much whatever he decides when he gets out of bed in the morning.”

Flores, Boyle wrote, “has repeatedly pushed to get agency money to organizations that fit his priorities, which include faith-based programs and those that combat child sexual victimization.” Thus the low-scoring Best Friends Foundation (79.5), headed by the wife of right-wing moral crusader (and gambling addict!) Bill Bennett, won more than $1 million for its abstinence-only/anti-drug curriculum. Enough Is Enough, which combats sexual predation online–admittedly a worthy cause, but not quite in line with the historical mission of the OJJDP–took $750,000. The faith-based Victory Outreach Special Services got a windfall of $1.2 million but had to turn down the grant because, Boyle noted, “it doesn’t have the organizational capacity to carry it out.”

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more at:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002769

[Supersedeas]

1. thanks for the links

[L. Coyote]

2. DOJ’s Magnolia Caper

DOJ’s Magnolia Caper
Scott Horton - April 1 - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002770


As my friend John Barrett reminds me, on this day in 1940, Robert H. Jackson, perhaps the nation’s greatest attorney general, gave one of his most important speeches. Jackson had only recently come to the helm at Justice; he had served as Solicitor General previously, and the demonstration of his skills as an advocate of exceptional eloquence and erudition had led President Roosevelt to make the logical choice and promote him. Jackson picked an important theme for a major address directed to a gathering of career prosecutors: he called his speech “the federal prosecutor.” This speech assembles the values that a prosecutor is expected to reflect, and it targets the most serious scourge that can infect the administration of justice–the misdirection of prosecutions for political purposes. “There can also be no doubt that to be closely identified with the intrigue, the money raising, and the machinery of a particular party or faction may present a prosecuting officer with embarrassing alignments and associations,” Jackson stated.

The anniversary of the delivery of this important speech provides a good opportunity to examine once more just how thoroughly the Bush Justice Department disrespects the indispensable guidance it offers—even as Attorney General Mukasey and Deputy Attorney General Filip quote it. Raw Story’s Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane offer us just that. They reexamine today the politically motivated prosecutions of Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor in Mississippi. I previously discussed the Diaz and Minor prosecutions here, here and here.

The most new ground developed in the piece relates to the curious role ............

[Richard Steele]

3. We don't have an Administration, we have an organized crime syndicate running the USA. K&R

Edditted fer spellin.

[DFW]

4. MORE corruption?

It is a mathematical impossibility to have more than 100% unless you include the Justice Department of Zimbabwe.

[KoKo]

5. I Hope "Chucky and DiFi" are very happy with their choice....

They talk big and carry teen sticks. :-(