Current and former department lawyers said they were appalled by the deep reach of the political hiring, which affected hundreds of rejected job seekers and as many as 40 immigration judges who were recruited under the political criteria. Those judges may remain on the bench because their career civil service jobs carry significant employment protections.I have to wonder who can in good conscience call themselves a Republican these days. If you're out there, I'd love to hear from you. Can you justify this bullshit at all? Can you justify the weakening of our justice system, the appointment of people (some of whom, due to their status as federal employees, can probably NEVER be fired) who are not qualified for their position?
TPM Muckraker has more on the subject. Here's another article about how Goodling even went after other Republicans, if they weren't conservative enough for her taste.
What an asshole. I like how the Justice Department didn't hire people from law schools such as Harvard because they had "liberal" sounding resumes, but they had no problem with a jerk like Goodling, who is a graduate of Regent University, the evangelical school in Virginia founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. Hmmm...respected 200 year old institution? Or 20-some year old school founded by insane person?
Posts
3 comments:
The problem isn't the Republicans. Or, rather, they're part of the problem, but the cause is something bigger.
The problem is that the goal of the political system is not to "govern well". It is to "gain or stay in power".
Unfortunately, until we can come up with a way to make the former goal enforcable, the latter goal appears to be the best way to elicit "as good as we're gonna get" political behaviour from our governments.
I am not going to say that the Democrats are all saints or anything. But there just seems to be this really evil movement that has taken over the Republican party, where the undermining of fairness and good government is almost a part of the party's official mantra these days. They are much more guilty of enforcing the party line among their members, and they definitely have a lot more of a "The Party Above All" thing happening.
There's always been a line that government people were supposed to be mindful of. Yes, you could do your little political tricks, but there was a sense of honor at one point, a sense that you should on occasion strive to do the right thing, not just the politically expedient thing. There's scarcely a drop of integrity left in the Republican party (save for maybe Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe).
Yeah - I guess we'll see if the D's get power this time around. Only the ruling party really gets to abuse power.
Right now, I don't know if it's the Republicans, or just the times - so let's see what the Democrats do if they get the opportunity.