Justice may be blind, but she’s leaning a bit to the right

The Justice Department’s Inspector General has found significant bias in an honors hiring program in the federal prosecutors department — a bias toward recruiting conservatives and rejecting liberals.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

The not-at-all-surprises continue.

The shift began in 2002, when advisers to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft restructured the honors program in response to what some officials saw as a liberal tilt in recruiting young lawyers from elite law schools like Harvard and Yale. While the recruitment was once controlled largely by career officials in each section who would review applications, political officials in the department began to assume more control, rejecting candidates with liberal or Democratic affiliations “at a significantly higher rate” than those with Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

Well, we can’t leave hiring decisions to career officials. I mean, who knows what their political reliability is?

The shift appeared to accelerate in 2006, under then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with two aides on the screening committee — Michael Elston and Esther Slater McDonald — singled out for particular criticism. The blocking of applicants with liberal credentials appeared to be a particular problem in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which has seen an exodus of career employees in recent years as the department has pursued a more conservative agenda in deciding what types of cases to bring.

Great — drive out the incumbants by letting a political agenda drive prosecutions — then backfill ’em with conservatives. Brilliant!

Applications that contained what were seen as “leftist commentary” or “buzz words” like environmental and social justice were often grounds for rejecting applicants, according to e-mails reviewed by the inspector general’s office. Membership in liberal organizations like the American Constitution Society, Greenpeace, or the Poverty and Race Research Action Council were also seen as negative marks.

Affiliation with the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative group, was viewed positively.

Note that none of this has to do with qualifications. It has to with ideology, and applying it to hiring what are supposed to be (by the department’s own regulations, not to mention, oh … the law) nonpartisan positions. And these are the sorts of hires that may be around for decades to come. 

Now, who thinks the Justice Department will actually follow up on this, let alone prosecute. Unless, of course, the Administration changes hands …

(via Ginny)