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Banned
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Today comes confirmation for the premise of this thread:
Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003275.php
Goodling Admits to Political Hiring
By Paul Kiel - May 23, 2007, 11:48 AM
Both in her opening statement and in further testimony, Goodling admitted to weeding out candidates for assistant U.S. attorney positions because they were not Republicans.
Under questioning from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Goodling admitted that she did block the hiring of an assistant U.S. attorney in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office because she judged him too liberal. "I made a snap judgment and I regret it," she said. When Sanchez pressed as to how many times Goodling had done this, Goodling said she couldn't come up with a number, and that she didn't "feel like there were that many cases."
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) later pressed her on whether she had committed a crime. “I don’t believe that I intended to commit a crime," she said at first. Then, when he pressed, <b>“I know I crossed the line of civil service rules."
Did that mean she crossed the line of breaking the law, he asked? "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn’t mean to," she said.</b> Here's video of that:
<b>WATCH IT</b>
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Quote:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/doc...?resultpage=3&
Monica Goodling's Opening Statement Before the House Judiciary Committee
05-23-2007
Updated: 05-23-2007
...Nevertheless, I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and may have take inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions. I regret these mistakes....
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Quote:
Goodling: a Power player behind Justice's scenes
The former Justice insider, a mystery to many, is set to testify under immunity in Congress on the U.S. attorneys' firings.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
May 23, 2007
........"People like Monica … were misguided and didn't get it," said H.E. "Bud" Cummins III, one of the U.S. attorneys dismissed last year. Still, Cummins said, Gonzales and other senior officials deserve the lion's share of the blame. "It is their job to stand up and say, 'No,' " he said in an interview. "There obviously was a failure, no matter whose idea this was, at the top levels of the department to assert independent judgment."
Some of Goodling's former co-workers insist that she has been vilified.
Mark Corallo, a former Justice Department spokesman, said Goodling was trying to bring balance to the department, and he ridiculed those who criticized her for trying to screen potential hires based on their political beliefs. <b>The civil rights division, he argued, has long been populated by "some of the most radical Democrats in the law."</b>
Quote:
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0507/420376.html
ONE OF THE TOP PRIORITIES OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IS TO PROSECUTE VIOLATIONS OF OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. HOWEVER THE TEAM OF PROSECUTORS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAS PUT TOGETHER LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE AMERICA IT'S SUPPOSED TO PROTECT.
Story: Some of the most notorious crimes committed in America police brutality..cross burnings..violence at abortion clinics..modern day slavery - all federal crimes - are prosecuted by The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
But our investigation has found that the Justice Department is missing a key component in its mission to protect civil rights - DIVERSITY � diversity in the attorney ranks to prosecute cases.
Congressman John Conyers: "They need someone to investigate them."
The I-Team has learned that since 2003...the criminal section within the Civil Rights Division has not hired a single black attorney to replace those who have left. Not one.
(Graphic)
As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section - only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 - even though the size of the staff has more than doubled....
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....and Lurita Doan at the GSA, was busy, after Bush appointed her, "post Katrina"...."FEMAtizing" that agency, as well as further politicizing it:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052201653.html
Changes Spurred Buying, Abuses
Taxpayers Overcharged Millions in Sun Deal, Auditor Says
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 23, 2007; A01
In February 2005, an auditor at the General Services Administration presented evidence to agency leaders that one of the government's top technology contractors was overcharging taxpayers.
GSA auditor James M. Corcoran reported that Sun Microsystems had billed the government millions more for computer software and technical support than it charged its commercial customers.
If true, the allegation was grounds to terminate the contract and launch a fraud investigation. Instead, senior GSA officials pressed last summer to renew the contract.
That decision meant the government's leading contracting agency would be able to continue collecting millions of dollars in what are called industrial funding fees from Sun under rules that permit the GSA to take a percentage of every sale made to the government. It also meant that taxpayers would pay millions more than necessary, according to congressional investigators.
"We thought of ourselves as being, not a part of the government, but as being a business, and we looked to profit on our customers," said GSA contracting officer Herman S. Caldwell Jr., who warned his superiors against renewing the Sun contract. "When a government buying office becomes a profit center, then bad things are likely to happen."
The circumstances surrounding the Sun contract are now being scrutinized by the GSA's inspector general, the Justice Department and members of Congress.
<b>"Why did GSA agree to do business with Sun despite warnings of possible fraud?"</b> Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
GSA officials declined to comment for this article. In testimony before Congress in March, <b>GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan said the agency made a good decision on behalf of taxpayers by renewing the contract.</b> She also said a top aide had looked into the auditor's allegation and told her "nothing was there."
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He called Goodling "a real perfectionist; an incredibly energetic, good person."
Growing influence
Goodling's rise to power paralleled the growing influence of religious conservatives in the Bush administration in general, and the Justice Department in particular.
In 1999, she earned a degree from the Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Va. <b>Founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, Regent University claims 150 past and present members of the Bush administration among its alumni. Accredited by the American Bar Assn., the law school boasts of a "distinctive" Christian-based mission "to bring to bear the will of our Creator, Almighty God, upon legal education and the legal profession,"</b> according to its website.
Goodling was an ardent practitioner of her faith, according to former colleagues who — like most interviewed for this report — requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about her. Her conservative ideals, they said, were such that she once refused to go to a Justice Department baby shower because the mother was unwed. They also said that she once balked at funding an anti-gun public service video because she thought it promoted rap music and glorified a violent lifestyle.
After law school and a stint during the 2000 election doing opposition research for the GOP, Goodling landed in the public affairs office at the Justice Department. She did a six-month tour at the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., that was designed to give nonprosecutors a taste of the courtroom. In spring 2005, she became deputy director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys — a Justice Department arm that provides support, personnel and policy guidance to prosecutors around the country.
Her tenure at that office appears to have been crucial to facilitating the plan to fire U.S. attorneys. Former colleagues said that <b>she prevailed upon the head of the office, Michael A. Battle, to replace two long-serving officials who probably would have viewed the firing of prosecutors without cause as highly suspicious, and helped install a fellow Regent law school graduate as a replacement.</b>
Battle, who since has resigned from the Justice Department and has been unavailable for comment, was the Justice official who notified seven of the U.S. attorneys that they were being dismissed in December.
Later, as both counselor to Gonzales and the White House liaison, Goodling's influence appeared to grow. Working in tandem with Sampson, she was delegated the power to hire and fire scores of political appointees at the Justice Department.
She also weighed in on the hiring of career prosecutors in offices run by interim U.S. attorneys around the country, who did not have full hiring authority. She once held up the application of a Howard University law graduate who had worked in the civil rights division of the Environmental Protection Agency <b>because she feared he was a "liberal Democrat,"</b> former colleagues said.
Justice Department e-mails produced during the congressional investigation into the U.S. attorneys' firings have shown her to be a powerful and opinionated figure. Her notes indicate she considered fired U.S. Atty. David C. Iglesias of New Mexico to be an "absentee landlord"; Iglesias contends he was away from the office only because he was fulfilling a military reserve obligation. She saved a U.S. attorney in North Carolina from the hit list because "there are plenty of others there to start with.".....
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It was also reported on May 21, that the office of Special Counsel has issued a determination that Lurita Doan broke the law by violating the Hatch Act:
http://news.google.com/news?um=1&tab...doan+hatch+act
Bushy...."yer doin' a heck of a job" ! |