Historians will have a field day trying to rank the failures of the Bush administration. Iraq will likely top the list, but the disgraceful politicization of the Department of Justice has to be in the top 5.
Our justice system isn’t perfect, but it’s still the envy of the world. Keeping politics out of the decision to prosecute is critical to the health of our republic.
Last year, we saw how Alberto Gonzales and the other political hacks appointed by President Bush fired nine United States attorneys for not towing the line. Now more information is coming to light about how hiring practices for the Honors Program and other staff positions were influenced by politcal considerations, which is unlawful.
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.
It will be interesting to see if Gonzales is directly implicated in this scandal.
Posted in: Civil Liberties
Tags: Alberto Gonzales, Bush administration, cronyism, Justice Department
Agree with what you say here except that I don’t think it is “top 5″ in the list of Bush failures. I would rank as follows
1. Bush war in Iraq, justified by Bush lies. This war is killing and maiming thousands of working class America boys and girls and innocent Iraqi civilians by the thousands.
2. Bush gasoline prices, a direct result of number 3
3. Failed Bush policy in the middle east, resulting in election of unfriendly governments in Iran, and Palestine
4. The Bush subprime crisis caused by lack of goverment control over Bush friends who run financial institutions. The subprime crisis has caused the Bush housing price crash and the Bush foreclosures trend, with tens of thousands of working Americans losing their home while the Bush insider friends in places like Bear Stearns received tax payer funded Bush bail outs.
5. Bush underemployment, incentivising the wealthiest Americans to outsource working Americans jobs to China and India
6. Bush price inflation caused by lack of an energy and food policy and poor middle east policy
7. Bush lowering image of America and hence our power, by replacing international diplomacy with an arrogant unilateral decision making system, aggravated further by the fact that the unilateral policies were almost always foolish.
8. Bush destruction of the environment by refusing to honor Kyoto treaty.
9. Bush led torturing of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay will be compared to actions of Nazis in WWII someday.
10. The Bush elimination of due process and the Bush spying on American citizens.
I am sure I have missed something here but the illegal actions in justrice are in my opinion in the top 20
Come ON guys….
GO’s post is typical political bullshit. No one complained with all the corruption in the clinton admin (whitewater, monica, travel gate, pardons of REAL criminals, clinton library donations, chinese spying and acquiring military secrets, sensitive papers going out of the congressional library in what’s his names socks the list goes f’ing on and on and on).
AND
1) Bush did NOT lie– misguided, YES, Lie NO– did he want to invade Iraq? Yes– did he not pay attention to conflicting information of WMD – probably– did he lie— Absolutely NOT —
2) Bush Has NOTHING to do with gas prices– JP you’re better than that. Gas is a WORLD commodity and demand is going UP– Demand UP, Price Up– and maybe some speculative gambling is involved in the mix
3) Just silliness
4) Deregulation has a lot to do with it, BUT–idiots taking out loans they cannot afford is the reason those idiots are losing their homes– throw the bums out as far as I’m concerned
5) Bush underemployment???? Under most of his term the unemployment rate was 4.5ish%– that’s FULL employment for all intents and purposes. Jobs are being outsourced because it is absolutely moronic to pay a working 30 k a year to put a screw in a hole– unions have destroyed manufacturing in this county with their retarded demands for high wages for what any monkey can do.
6) Every president since carter takes the blame for our retarded energy policy– your food thing makes no sense.
7) too long of an explanation to retort– the UN (a horrible anti – American, corrupt institution) cannot be trusted with OUR security
9) Torture– give me a break- compared to the actions of the Nazi’s??? Yea–stacking naked terrorists is JUST like cooking jews in a furnace– unreal
10) Due process for citizens of another country — makes no sense. and I’ve NEVER been spied on.
Nick: All I can say is touchè, and your stunning logic has me tied in knots. I can only concede that I have lost the debate. you’re right, the American president is a powerless figurehead who has no impact on the economy or world events.
I’m working on getting GO away from the dark side–now I’m working on you
. See the light, immerse your self in conservatism, listen to Rush, Sean, O’Reilly and be saved!!!!
You don’t need to change sides to realize JP is a moron. Maybe Bush stole JP’s brain too.
Nick and Old Friend – if you guys keep defending this pathetic administration and the GOP, you’ll just keep proving that the word “moron” is something you should utter when you look in the mirror.
It’s obvious both of you are hopeless partisans. What does it take for you guys to be critical of your own party? How bad do they have to screw things up before you realize that MAYBE these guys had a chance to run things and they blew it. Just once can you even contemplate that your beloved Republicans did something wrong?
I guess we should sit back and say what? – that Alberto Gonzales was a great attorney general that the country should be proud of?
You guys are a joke. You won’t concede one point. Not one mistake. Let’s face it – you both supported one of the worst presidents in our history, and you don’t have the guts to confront that painful fact. What’s the matter? Can’t your ego handle it? You’re no different than Bush himself, who is incapable of recognizing a mistake.
From a politics point of view, this is all a good thing. You’re both demonstrating that the hard-core Republican voters are completely clueless as to why the country has finally woken up and recognized that Bush is incompetent and the Republican Party in its current form is a fraud. Only a massive loss in the fall will get you guys and your miserable party to look in the mirror and ask “What went wrong?”
The joke is on you liberals. What we have today is the product of decades of warped liberal thoughts and policies from welfare handouts to moral relativism to total disregard for unborn human life- and we are now paying for those- not moronic, but retarded – policies in the form of crumbling schools, exploding prison populations, out of wedlock births, a huge divide between the have and have nots, lack of respect for authority, a “give me something for nothing” mentality and on and on and on.
I don’t defend the Bush administration, they have done plenty of wrong. But you and your left cohorts make him into some anti-christ mongoloid devoid of any compassion or intelligence. Any leader that demonstrates any faith based morals has been demonized by the left, Hollywood, and the main stream media for years as some type of mindless bible thumping idiot which is a horrible mischaracterization.
And you mention hopless partisan??? That’s hilarious. In the liberal world BO is the second coming–all of his policies have come down on tablets from God. He’s done absolutely nothing wrong– he’s run an impeccable campaign that “historians will praise for generations.” His speaches are inspired by some political God that has entered BO’s sacred body and guides him to greatness– I wonder who the political partisans really are.
Come on….
My comment has nothing to do with partisanship. (Although it is patently hypocritical of you to deride partisanship when you run a partisan blog!) JP’s post was laughably simplistic and blames everything but his erectile dysfunction on Bush. I have to assume he in uneducated — probably a union member.
I would never argue that the Bush administration has not made lots of mistakes. I just don’t think the quasi-socialist agenda Obama has laid out so far is the right way to move forward. And I can’t imagine a worse scenario for the country than an unchecked Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate.
Actually, JP is an executive in a global manufacturing company. So much for your assumption.
Calling Obama quasi-socialist tells me you’re spending too much time lsitening to Rush or Hannity and very little time reading about Obama’s record or reading his books.
He is not nearly as liberal as you suggest he is. The media is hyperventillating about his “move to the center” though many of the positions were exactly what he has been saying for years, particularly on guns and the death penalty.
You call this a partisan blog, but I have always been willing to criticize Democrats along with Republicans when they screw up. The Democrats were a mess in the 1980s and that’s why I voted for Reagan and for W’s father. Right now the screw-ups are coming from Bush and the Republicans. By calling JP a moron when he criticizes Bush you come across as someone who doesn’t realize Bush has been a disaster.