DOJ Lawyers Lawyer Up
Frankly, it scares the shit out of me to know that our Justice Department is filled with lawyers who don't even know when they're breaking the law.
The Justice Department released an internal memo today to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees telling us basically what we've known since spring last year. That Republican operatives (gasp) hired people based on their loyalty to conservative issues and George W. Bush.
Kyle Sampson, through his lawyer, considers to this day his highly partisan hiring practices "an honest mistake." Considering that refusing to hire people for career positions at the Department of Justice because of political considerations is breaking a basic law that you would think every lawyer would know, especially one already working at the DOJ, it kind of makes one wonder what other clowns got in and what Republican credentials they had to show.
Goodling's shyster, John Dowd, bristled at the thought that his client lied to Congress by saying,
"Far from attempting to conceal information, Ms. Goodling went to great lengths to provide the Congress with relevant facts, including important information about matters that had not yet come to the public's attention."
So explain to us why she'd never admitted this information when she testified May of last year in her 5th amendment-laden non-testimony?
Here's a short list of the people Goodling refused to give "the keys to the Kingdom" of Bushworld: A man who was suspected of being "a liberal Democrat", a man with antiterrorism experience whose wife's political affiliations were suspect and even a woman just suspected of being a lesbian, which is also a clearcut case of a civil rights infraction. Then, April of this year, Goodling was accused of engineering the ouster of a highly qualified attorney for the same reason, despite the lady's extremely high performance reviews.
This brazen and frankly fascist attempt to achieve political purity at the Department of Justice is frighteningly reminiscent of Nazi Germany's attempt to keep the Homeland purely Aryan by purging their nation of Jews and homosexuals. One wonders if Goodling and Sampson marked the files of unwelcome applicants with pink triangles.
So, Bush's goon squad essentially weakened our efforts in the war on terror, set gay and lesbian civil rights back about a half a century and blatantly broke the law and expect mercy because they apologized for it afterwards and, despite how they made their living, claimed ignorance of the law.
WH mouthpiece Tony Fratto sniffed at the DOJ memo and said, "There really is not a lot new here."
Unfortunately, he's right, since this blatant partisanship that stretches from the Department of Justice all the way to Iraq is just business as usual in the kingdom of the ideologically blind.
posted by jurassicpork @ Monday, July 28, 2008
6 comments
6 Comments:
don't forget that monica goodling is the first justice department official to demand fifth amendment protection while testifying before congress.
fucking aaron burr didn't demand that.
john marshal and john jay didn't demand that.
all over the nation there are founder's souls uneasy.
especially the ones that loved the law, like john adams, john quincy adams, even that rat bastard hamilton was a fine attorney who wrote passionately about the rule of law as opposed to the rule of men.
shit like this is the reason i have been calling for the international courts in the hague to be brought into the picture.
our own system might very well be too far degraded to function with anything the rest of the world might regard as just or lawful.
citizen marat? paging citizen jean-paul marat.
we needs us some guillotines. right there on pennsylvania fucking avenue.
They don't know, and don't care.
And JP, you'll not get away that easy...
They know exactly what they are doing. This whole public routine is just to give the conservative-controlled MSM some excuse to let them off easy.
This is exactly what the Republican base voted for, the average GOP voter wants a one-party state to be ruled by a king.
Besides, it those damned Liberal's fault, Rush said so.
I live in Central PA where the cretin Monica is from . Fortunately, an embarrassing news item about her from the Associated Press ran into todays Patriot News, the local newspaper serving this area surrounding Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania. It's a very damning article and should be embarrassing for her family. http://preview.tinyurl.com/5rexxc But I don't know. They may take pride in what she did, even though highly unethical and likely the worst kind of illegal. (Reminds me of the purges in Soviet Russia during the Russian Revolution - Monica would have made a classic apparatchik to do the parties bidding).
Pennsylvania has more religious Kooks in the Central Pennsylvania area than I remember from my home state of South Carolina, where Bob Jones University is located. You'll find this group of backwards thinking religious zealots in full force and dominating the local areas primarily along the backbone of the Appalachian mountains, which extend into Pennsylvania and run down to Georgia, although they have been branching out into other areas. (and have Texas down pat).
Monica Goodling:
born 1973;
graduated from high school 1991;
B.A. in "Speech Communications" from Messiah College, 1995;
At this time, Goodling lists her work experience as including being a country club lifeguard, and working the Guest Services desk at a Holiday Inn; (a law school resume shows these two positions as the only paid occupations she ever held);
enrolled American University law school 1996;
transferred to Pat Robertson's evangelical Regent University Law School (whose motto is "Christian Leadership To Change The World");
Regent University is a 4th-tier school -- the lowest ranking in terms of quality education, research output, impact, academic reputation, retention rate, student selectivity, quality of faculty, graduate performance;
while at Regent U., Goodling maintained a personal web page where she identified CNN and USA Today as "news from the left" (that's right; USA Today is a left-wing news organization)
at the time Goodling was enrolled at Regent U., the school was not even an accredited law school; the year Goodling graduate (1999) was the first year Regent U. became accredited;
the year Goodling graduated from Regent U., roughly 60% of all its graduating lawschool students failed the bar exam -- reputedly among the worst failure rates ever recorded;
upon graduating from Regent U., Goodling found work in the Republican Nat. Committee during the campaign to elect Bush in 2000;
after Bush was sworn in as president in 2001, Goodling was offered a job in the DOJ press office;
thereafter, she was assigned to the DOJ executive office and became Deputy Director of the Executive Office;
Less than one year later, she was assigned to the Attorney General's office where she served as a the 3rd highest Justice Department official in the country, directly beneath John Ashcroft (later Alberto Gonzales);
Prior to this time, she had never worked as a lawyer, much less as a prosecutor, either at the state or federal level; it does not appear that she ever clerked or interned in any capacity as a lawyer while in law school or thereafter;
Upon being assigned to the AG office, Goodling was responsible for the job performance of 92 U.S. attorney generals, over whom she had delegated hiring and firing authority;
In 2007 Goolding took an indefinite leave of absence because she was implicated in the U.S. attorney-firing scandal;
She was granted immunity in exchange for testifying before Congress, which she did in May 2007;
Goodling testified that she "crossed the line" (i.e., broke the law), broke civil service rules regarding hiring and firing, and improperly weighed political factors in considering applicants for DOJ appointments.
She was 32 years old at the time.
At the time of her testimony, the Bush Administration had hired/appointed no fewer than 150 Regent U. graduates.
This hiring spree was spear-headed by Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director, Kay Cole James.
Prior to becoming Bush's director of the OPM, Kay Cole James was (surprise!) the Dean of Regent U. government school.
She was also VP of the Family Research Counsel, a right-wing evangelical fund-raising and lobbying organization.
After leaving the OPM, James took a position as VP of "National Security Transformation" for MZM, Inc. -- one of several companies implicated in the Rep. Randy Cunningham (and others) scandal; she resigned when the scandal broke;
After resigning as Bush's AG, John Ashcroft was hired as Regent U. law school "Distinguished Prof. of Law & Gov't".
And on and on and on and on and on. . . .
How wonderfully, conservatively inbred!
Post a Comment
<< Home