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Today's Must Read
The first in a series of inspector general reports investigating the politicization of the Justice Department is expected today, and the Washington Post has a sneak peek.
The report to be released today by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine will, according to the Post, chronicle how young conservative law students were favored hires in stocking the DOJ's prestigious -- and heretofore non-partisan -- Honors Program.
Under former Attorney General John Ashcroft, oversight for the Honors Program, which had traditionally been the responsibility of senior career officials, fell under the purview of Ashcroft's key political advisers.
The honors program, which each year places about 150 law school graduates with top credentials in a rotation of Justice jobs, historically had operated under the control of senior career officials. Shifting control of the program to Ashcroft's advisers prompted charges of partisanship from law professors and former government lawyers who had worked under Democratic administrations.
Critics complained that the honors program favored conservative applicants, and turned down highly qualified prospects because of left-leaning affiliations:
One Harvard Law School graduate said that when he applied for the honors program a few years ago he was warned by professors and fellow students to remove any liberal affiliations from his résumé.Concerned Justice employees also raised alarms last year by sending a letter to lawmakers who had been examining whether political considerations led to the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.
Keep an eye out for Michael Elston in the report today. The former chief of staff to the deputy attorney generalwas named as a central figure in the politicization of the honors program over a year ago:
Allegations concerning political hiring for the Honors Program -- the Department's historically rigorous program for hiring entry-level lawyers -- have centered on Michael Elston, the chief of staff to the deputy attorney general. A group of anonymous Justice Department employees raised alarms with Congress last month, complaining that Elston rejected hundreds of potential applicants to the program last year seemingly based on their political backgrounds.
Josh
Zachary
Well, what's wrong with stacking the Justice Department with more Right Wingers? The world could use a few more John Yoos, distorting the constitution and interpreting all legal decisions to mean exactly what any Pug wants them to mean!
June 24, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's just the return of Jacksonian Democracy. "To the victor belong the spoils!"
June 24, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The real issue here is the increase in the number of political appointees in the executive agencies. The Bushies got around civil service hiring requirements by creating new job titles which were outside the usual hiring limits.
If Congress really wants to fix the problem, going after the appointed political hacks who overreached is not sufficient, the civil service needs to be reformed (again).
The Dems will be unwilling to do this since they are looking forward to installing their own cronies when they regain the presidency. It's these institutional reforms that don't get any notice that are really needed if anything is going to change.
Other areas where the gravy train will be irresistible include lobbying reform, election finance and pork barrel spending. The problem with the GOP is that they just went too far and called attention to the way things normally operate, but the public hasn't caught on to the bigger issues and is being fed the "few rotten apples" story.
June 24, 2008 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Political appointees have to leave when the administration is over. Career people do not. If the point of the program was to recruit political ideologues to hold career jobs then that would be much more serious than playing the usual game a little too aggressively.
June 24, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
The objective is the lard various federal agencies with rightwing idealogues. These folks will rise through the ranks of the agencies, become judges, administrators, etc and perpetuate the Bu$hco doctrine for decades to come.
June 24, 2008 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
A wholesale look into the "burrowing in" antics of this Administration's appointees into career slots must be an overriding priority for both Congress in it's required oversight role and the new Administration, whomever it may be.
There are a ton of new "special assistants" and "confidential assistants", "deputy chiefs of staff" and the like throughout the government that the present Administration has added to the rolls of political appointees. These didn't exist before.
Putting loyalists into these Schedule C slots then allowed the Administration to launch them into career government slots, using the Ramspeck preference - all the while having political appointees approve the hiring (before, career staff approved career staff).
It's a mess.
June 24, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
To the victors go the spoils, I guess. I have to believe this kind of stuff goes on in every adminsitration. I'd be more curious to see if the applicants that did get spots had sub-par grades. If they had the requisite grades but were also in line with the administration ideologically, I don't see why this would go anywhere.
June 24, 2008 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can believe what you want, but that doesn't make it true. Hiring based on partisan and ideological qualifications (which the Bushies have admitted doing) is actually illegal. Administrations that care about governing hire qualified people, and administrations that don't believe they're above the law actually follow the law in their hiring.
June 24, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
SOmehting tells me LIberty University did very well with this program?
June 24, 2008 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oddly, I have a lot of sympathy with the cover story. If the Justice Department was drawing its ranks primarily or solely from the Ivy League, that is a problem. Relying on the top tier of private schools creates a subtle and insidious class bias in our government which reinforces the cluelessness of Washington culture.
I have no doubt that our national policies would be a lot different if the background of our leaders and their deputies more closely resembled the demographics of our nation. Labor enforcement, for one, might have a different spin if Justice included a few lawyers who had to work for Wal-Mart, Dominos or McD's to earn money for college.
Of course, the point of the program isn't to diversify Justice, just to institute a new conservative class. Still, the idea is one to ponder for future presidents.
June 24, 2008 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Relying on the top tier of private schools creates a subtle and insidious class bias in our government which reinforces the cluelessness of Washington culture.
No, it doesn't. As a law school student myself-- far removed from the Ivys-- I want my government stacked with the best and the brightest, and I assure you they come from the prestigious schools. That does not create a class bias, just an intelligence bias, one which I would hope all Americans would appreciate-- we WANT the intellectual elite running our government, not some dumb ass who never amounted to anything except what mommy and daddy handed him.
June 24, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
The chief occupant of the White House had sub-par grades. The head of the Justice Department had sub-par grades. We already have enough information on the record to know these were political appointments of GOOD BUSHIES rather than just Republicans having their rightful day! Afterall, everyone of the Federal Prosecutors that were replaced were Republicans. This is something alltogether different and is the direct result of decisions like those made in the planning of the war, or response to Katrina. Heck of a job George!
June 24, 2008 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clearly there has been a concerted effort by the White House to turn the Justice Department into a political gestapo. And I guess the Justice Honors Program has now become their own special little "Hitler Youth" camp. I'll certainly keep an eye out for it whenever I'm in a position to review legal resumes going forward.
June 24, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
How shocking!
A group of thugs seizes power in a judicial coup in 2000 and then stuffs ever federal department with less than ethical partisan hacks who genuinely believe that "everyone does it" no matter what the unethical behavior. They then go on to thoroughly corrupt every program and office they touch by seeking out hacks such as themselves.
It really is not news that these two-bit crooks have damaged the DOJ as well as all the other Federal Departments. The real question is how will the damage be ameliorated. Simply taking away the power of appointments and selections of interns and new hires will not be enough. This is the trouble with having a Congress that fails in it's role and enables corruption like that which has proliferated under the Bush regime.
Persaonlly, though I know it won't happen, I think everyone who was hired the past several years needs to be reviewed and made to reapply for whatever position they are in. Those who are hacks can be weeded out. If this sort of approach is not taken then the tumor continues to grow within DOJ as was the plan because these people will continue purusing their partisan agenda regardless.
June 24, 2008 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
BushCo legacy- dumbing down/politicization of every effing Fed dept. They leave in '09, we're stuck with it.
Some great legacy you got there, Georgie. It'll take a decade maybe, if the next Admin. gets right on it, just to get DoJ back to the way it was when GWB first set foot in the WH.
June 24, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry but the fact that someone went to Harvard doesn't make him an elitist. Lots of kids from blue-collar backgrounds have earned their way into Ivy League schools based on merit, not daddy's legacy. To automatically label them as elitist or perpetuating a class system is shortsighted. That doesn't mean that the Ivies are the only place to look for qualified lawyers. That would be stupid. But this idea that labels a John Edwards or a Barack Obama an elitist because they earned their way to the top just drives me crazy.
June 24, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
This administration from top to bottom is stacked with Monica Goodlings. All part of the Rove Reich 30-year plan. Judges, and career positions ensure that Bush's hackery continues into future administrations.
June 24, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pull on this thread and eventually it will reach to Don Siegelman.
June 24, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dadam,
The last I checked, the income distribution of incoming Ivy League freshmen was in the high upper ranges of society. Harvard and others have recognized this and are attempting to address this, but the fact of life is that the majority of the students of today's elite universities come from the elite families of the nation and world.
There's a limited number of top slots at schools and a much larger population of top students. Many of these top students end up at state schools. It's been a long, long time since "state school" equaled second rate in anything but public perception.
I'm not too comfortable with equating elitism with wealth. Maybe I'm biased, as my academic background is history, but the idea that the best scholars and students come from the Ivy League has long since been dismissed in my field. The distribution is a lot more diverse, with top scholars found at state schools.
As for the larger point, the Ivy League has educated the leaders of this country for quite awhile, including our current president. How's that working out for you?
June 24, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shrdlu,
The statistics tell a different story, unfortunately:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2008-02-04-private-college-tuition_N.htm
Yes, the bright exception can make it to Harvard and Columbia. Columbia is actually the exception to the rule, as they admit a higher percentage of middle and low income students. As for Edwards, I noted quite a bit of derision from our elite media directed at his "populist" rhetoric.
None of this changes the fact that the Ivy League are, by definition, elitist institutions. Nothing wrong with that and I am by no means suggesting that Ivy League graduates should not be hired into public service.
I'm merely suggesting that we are a diverse nation and recruiting from an already extremely class and income limited pool results in a governing class that has little experience or knowledge about the lives of the majority of people they govern. That's becoming a major problem.
June 24, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sort of off topic... If Ashcroft (as we all knew before the report) crafted his hiring practices based on conservative ideology and seeded the program with fledglings of a feather, it illustrates how profoundly off the beam the warrantless domestic spying must be.
If Gonzo's charge into Ashcroft's hospital room brought resistance from bedridden John, how phenomenally rank it must be!
What the hell is the poo with this FISA vote madness?
June 24, 2008 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, this is no surprise to anyone who followed the excellent work McClatchy News Service has done reporting the politicization angle. And let's not forget that it's not just civil sevice/career jobs
that are being packed with ideologues, it's also the courts. By the time Bush gets done, federal judgeships will be 70% Republican (up from 52% Democratic under Clinton). And these are also lifetime appointments. There is a lot of ideological corruption over the past 8 years, and it will just continue under McCain, because this is the work of the RNC as well as Rove.
June 24, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
CParis and Jeffgee are absolutely right. In past administrations the Civil Service made the decisions about the hiring of interns and entry level positions. These usually consisted of the best applicants from a variety of schools (Stanford, Michigan, Texas, ND, etc.) not just the Ivy league schools (although they dominate).
The Rove idea was/is part of the permanent Republican Majority, not just in the Legislature but also the Judicial branches of government. The election of 2000 cemented this concept within the conservative mindset.
These interns and entry level appointments will eventually establish themselves, receive promotions, move on to be State Attorney Generals, State and Federal Judges and you can project further.
Keep an eye over your shoulder for the next 25 to 30 years.
June 24, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've seen many wingnuts on this forum I post at predict that this will "blow up in the Dems' faces". Then more layers get peeled off the onion.
Still wiating for the "blowup" they're predicting...
June 24, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink