Terrific idea: hire Justice Department employees based on merit

Perhaps the people given jobs in the Justice Department because they could be counted on to serve the interests of the right-wing Republican Party will now be joined by people who will get their jobs based on their merit.

Illegally Rejected Justice Dept. Applicants May Get Another Look

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
August 12, 2008

"Job applicants who were rejected by the Justice Department because of improper political considerations will be urged to apply for open positions, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told an audience yesterday.

"Mukasey said the hiring system at Justice had broken down and that department leaders had failed to supervise the behavior "of those who did wrong." But the attorney general stopped short of agreeing to weed out lawyers and immigration judges who won their jobs based on faulty criteria..."

George Bush Now Has a Monica Problem

"In Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department, Democrats and liberals who were denied civil service jobs were said to have a "Monica Problem." After yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, the Justice Department has a Monica Problem of its own."

Above quote is from "Monica's Own Monica Problem" by Dana Milbank, published in The Washington Post on May 24, 2007.

Here are some outtakes from Millbank's article:

"The source of the metastasizing Monica Problem (not to be confused with the previous president's Monica Problem) is Monica Goodling, a graduate of Pat Robertson's law school who was the Justice Department's enforcer of partisan purity until she resigned and investigations began."

"Republicans must have known they had a problem on their hands, for they moved with dispatch to create diversions. Rep. Chris Cannon (Utah) opted to read into the record a lengthy editorial comparing Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) to Tony Soprano. Rep. Dan Lundgren (Calif.) delivered a 250-word speech praising his own glorious service as his state's attorney general."

"The only break Republicans got all day came from a neophyte Democrat on the committee, Steve Cohen (Tenn.), who decided to poke fun at the educational pedigree of Goodling, Regent University law school Class of '99 ("top 10.5 percent of class," reported her résumé).
"Are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class, 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?"
"I know it wasn't good," she conceded.
"Republicans erupted in groans and cries of "bigotry." "Regent University students won the American Bar Association's Negotiation Competition February 11," protested Randy Forbes (R-Va.)."

"Asked about her previous experience making personnel decisions, Goodling began her answer by noting that she was student body president in college."

"How many job applicants did she block because of political leanings? "I wouldn't be able to give you a number." Did she ask aspiring civil servants whom they voted for? "I may have." Did she screen applicants for career prosecutor jobs so that Republicans landed in those positions? "I think that I probably did.""

"[Monica] made clear from the start that she hadn't come to take the fall: At the top of her written testimony, bold and underlined, was the sentence "The Deputy Attorney General's Allegations are False."

It seems clear that in Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department, the entire Justice System was being run for the benefit of Republicans, not for Americans in general, who got partisan justice in exchange for the taxes they paid.