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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

OK, so now what is Congress going to do about it
Posted by Jill | 6:32 AM
I've long talked about a "tipping point of evil" in government -- a point at which the lawbreaking and the atrocities committed by an American administration become so egregious, so heinous, that the perpetrators become unaccountable because the sheer volume of crimes is too huge to be prosecuted.

When I think Congress having impeachment hearings for a president who lied about an affair while under oath, and has allowed this bunch to carry on, I despair for our entire system of government and wonder why we even bother to participate.

Yesterday the entire country found out what many of has known for a long time -- that the entire Justice Department was stocked with ideologues, and those not toeing the Official Party Line were purged:

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office, centered on the misconduct of a small circle of aides to Mr. Gonzales, including Monica Goodling, a former top adviser to the attorney general, and Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff. It also found that White House officials were actively involved in some hiring decisions.

According to the report, officials at the White House first developed a method of searching the Internet to glean the political leanings of a candidate and introduced it at a White House seminar called The Thorough Process of Investigation. Justice Department officials then began using the technique to search for key phrases or words in an applicant’s background, like “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.”

The report focused its sharpest criticism on Ms. Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly in the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.

Before a crush of cameras, Ms. Goodling testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the uproar over the firings of nine United States attorneys, admitting that she may have “crossed the line” at times in using politics in hiring decisions. But Monday’s report catalogued an effort much more systematic than Ms. Goodling described, leading some Democrats to charge that she, Mr. Sampson and Mr. Gonzales should be investigated for perjury.

Last month, the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, and the Office of Professional Responsibility released a separate report that found a similar pattern of politicized hiring at the Justice Department in reviewing applications from young lawyers for the honors and intern programs.

The report released on Monday goes much further in documenting pervasive evidence of political hiring for some of the department’s most senior career positions, including immigration judges, assistant United States attorneys and even senior counterterrorism positions.


So now there is a report. Is Congress going to do anything about this, or is this report the equivalent of another "sternly worded letter"?

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