The Goodling Report: How Aides Took Control of DOJ Hiring (Legal Times)

The Goodling Report: How Aides Took Control of DOJ Hiring
Joe Palazzolo
Legal Times
August 5, 2008

................

The report places the blame for the political manipulation primarily on two top aides to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: Monica Goodling, the White House liaison, and D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff. Both have been accused of breaking federal civil service laws and DOJ policy in using politics to vet applicants for career jobs.

But the report does something else. It provides the most detailed account yet of the inner workings of the Justice Department during the period of January 2004 to April 2007, and it shows how the two young aides were assisted in their effort by more senior officials who either actively helped their cause -- or quietly acquiesced.

The effort ranged from placing what they called "good Americans" in everything from temporary Main Justice slots to career judgeships in the federal immigration courts. More than 480 lawyers interviewed for career and political positions were tested with queries like, "Tell us about your political philosophy."

What follows is the story -- based almost entirely on the report -- of how they gained power and how they used it.

POWER GRAB

Monica Goodling knew how to work the system.......

In January 2006, just three months after coming aboard Attorney General Gonzales' staff as counsel, Goodling started rewriting the rules on the way DOJ lawyers were hired.

...............................

oh my more at:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202423529642

:D

It's just stunning to me that a novice attorney with practically no experience who graduated from--let's be delicate--a law school not generally known for its excellence could have been making such important and incompetent decisions. I'm tempted to blame the executive branch, but it's really Congress who abdicated all oversight responsibility under the shining umbrella of Chimp love.

come up with this scheme on their own -- not just a few bad aipple / oopples / ayeples

While whitewashing Gonzo and not mentioning the White House!!

...the GOP-controlled media will say the lowest-level employee involved is always ultimately responsible?

Why no one in an executive position is accountable for the department they are supposed to be responsible for?

Excuse my grammar.

Dullard, ideologically insane young woman with a diploma-mill law degree gets to remake the entire DOJ

I'll have some more reading tonight.

-Hoot