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DOJ: "Schlozman Deviated From Strict Standard"
Peter Carr, a DOJ spokesman, released the following statement in response to the report on politicized hiring:
Today's report describes troubling conduct by a former supervisor in the Civil Rights Division prior to his departure from the Division nearly three years ago. The mission of the Justice Department is the evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it, and that mission has to start with the evenhanded application of the laws within our own Department. As today's report makes clear, Mr. Schlozman deviated from that strict standard.The Department agrees with the recommendations outlined in the report and has already taken steps to implement them. In addition, the Civil Rights Division has taken additional steps to update its own hiring policies and to increase the role of career employees in its hiring process. As a result of these reforms, and the procedures already in place for evaluating the work and conduct of lawyers throughout the Department, we are confident that the institutional problems identified in today's report no longer exist and will not recur.
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Josh
Zachary
Doesn’t this meet Obama’s standard of “somebody has blatantly broken the law”?
I look forward to the Obama Justice Department prosecuting Mr. Schlozman.
January 13, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is there anything that can happen to those who were hired based on his actions? Or are they protected once they are in the DOJ? They are obviously not guilty of misconduct, but they are the beneficiaries of it.
If nothing can be done, what does this suggest about future actions of the DOJ? Is it destined to be tilted rightward for a long time as a result of illegal actions and there is no way to fix that? Will there be some misguided left-leaning administrator who will attempt to correct the balance? [Not suggesting this, just supposing.] Will the Republicans permit that to happen without protest?
HOW can this kind of thing be prevented in the future if it was so easy to do and to slip below the radar this time?
It seems to me that everything that went wrong under Bush happened because the government stopped doing the oversight things it needed to in order for it to work properly. How in the world can that be prevented in the future if another administration -- from either side -- decides to play fast and loose with the rules?
January 13, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are so many violations by the Bush Administration that are because they didn't give a damn about the basic trust that keeps government and society working, only about getting what they wanted. There are many actions that are prohibited or even illegal that there are not punishments for, simply because in every administration before this one, there was a basic assumption that if you said "you're not allowed to do that," the response of those serving in government would be "okay, we understand," not "how are you gonna stop me, punk?"
The corruption of the Justice Department is the very worst in this regard. Yes, Congress fell down on its oversight responsibilities (aided by lockstep Republicans who wouldn't have voted for impeachment if Bush had eaten a baby on national TV), but the enforcement of that oversight relies on a Justice Department that works for the people, not for the president. Bush's Justice Department outright said they wouldn't enforce contempt of Congress citations against administration members in the cases where Congress actually did perform its oversight role.
Establishing more specific rules doesn't help when the enforcers are so corrupt they refuse to enforce the rules they are sworn to uphold as their entire purpose in government. It is difficult to see what a solution could be. A modicum of good faith is essential to civilization, and fundamentally, the complete lack of that is what underlies all of the worst actions of the Bush Administration.
January 13, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink