Re: NBC: Fundies and The Justice Department
- From: Calvin Jones & the 13th Apostle <The.Bar.Is.a.Beautiful.Place@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 20 Apr 2007 13:16:28 -0700
I am still waiting to hear what our resident law and order guy has to
say about Abu Gonzales' testimony yesterday. Somehow, I don't think
that Joe would let a guy that was that inept work for him, were he
still a cop.
On Apr 20, 2:39 pm, gumboman <dontemai...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When will this nightmare be over? It's the fundietwats or us.
JH
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=262
A Letter from Anonymous Justice Employees
April 18th, 2007 by Jesse Lee
Today the House and Senate Judiciary Committees received a letter from
anonymous Justice Department employees concerning widespread
politicization at the Justice Department. Read the full letter here
(pdf). The opening excerpt:
Dear Messrs. Chairman,
Many of us in the Department of Justice have been watching with
admiration as you expose the overly political firing of United States
Attorneys and hope that you can help in returning our beloved
Department to of establishing justice in the United States. We are
equally concerned, however, about the politicizing of the
non-political ranks of Justice employees, offices which are
consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics.
Many employees within the Department's litigating divisions are
sitting quietly by, hoping that you will investigate what has happened
to the Attorney General's Honors Program and even the Summer Law
Intern Program (SLIP). You are surely aware that the Attorney
General's Honors Program has a long history of hiring top students
from a variety of law schools, and it is the only way that young
lawyers are able to come into the Department immediately after law
school. This year the divisions once again pored over applications and
resumes, choosing students to interview who demonstrated not only
excellent grades but a real interest in the areas of law they might be
hired to work in. After choosing potential candidates to interview,
the division personnel forwarded their lists to the Office of Attorney
Recruitment Management for what was traditionally final approval. This
is no longer a final step, however, because the list had to go higher
- to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. When the list of
potential interviewees was returned this year, it had been cut
dramatically.
The letter then goes on to describe confusion and consternation within
the divisions, and ultimately a meeting that was demanded by staff, in
which Michael Ellston, Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul
McNulty, "was offensive to the point of insulting" in addressing the
concerns. (Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has also testified
regarding the firings of the US Attorneys.) Ellston attributed the
removals from the interviewee lists to "spelling errors" and other
such technical problems. The letter continues from there:
When division personnel staff later compared the remaining
interviewees with the candidates struck form the list, one common
denominator appeared repeatedly: most of those struck form the list
had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge,
worked for a "liberal" cause, or otherwise appeared to have "liberal"
leanings. Summa cum laude graduates of both Yale and Harvard were
rejected for interviews.
The letter discusses further problems with the hirings, and adds that
there are ample email records of the meeting that could be obtained.
It concludes:
While the current political appointees repeatedly remind everyone that
the U.S. Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the President," the
Department's career attorneys serve the people of the United States.
We hope you will see fit to include this politicizing of the career
ranks in your questioning of Attorney General Gonzales and his staff.
Thank you.
A Group of Concerned Department of Justice Employees
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. made the following
statement in response to the letter:
"I take any accusations of undue politicization of career staff
seriously. We have already identified concerns in Department's Civil
Rights Division. These new accusations are clearly something we will
want to consider as well."
The hearing on the Civil Rights Division included some disturbing
testimony, including this from Joseph D. Rich, a former career lawyer
at the Civil Rights Division:
For example, during my tenure as section chief for the Voting Section,
I was ordered to change standard performance evaluations of attorneys
under my supervision to include critical comments of those who had
made recommendations that were counter to the political will of the
front office and to improve evaluations of those who were politically
favored.
In my 32 years of management in the division before this
administration, I was never asked to alter my performance evaluations.
The hearing was prompted by widespread discontent in the division, as
reported by the Washington Post amongst others:
Justice Dept. rights division faces upheaval
Dan Eggen, Washington Post - November 20, 2005
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which has enforced
antidiscrimination laws for nearly half a century, is in the midst of
an upheaval that has driven away dozens of veteran lawyers and that
has damaged morale for many of those who remain, according to former
and current employees.
Almost 20 percent of the division's lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in
part because of a buyout program that some lawyers say was aimed at
pushing out those who did not share the Bush administration's views on
civil rights laws. Longtime career litigators said political
appointees have cut them out of hiring and major policy decisions,
including approvals of disputed GOP redistricting plans in Mississippi
and Texas.
In the meantime, prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender
discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have
declined by 40 percent over the past five years, according to
department statistics.
.
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