ADMINISTRATION
The Loyal Bushies Hiring Guide

Last year, Alberto Gonzales resigned as attorney general after he could not explain why the Justice Department had fired several qualified U.S. attorneys who had prosecuted Republican officials or declined to pursue cases against Democrats. "Now it turns out that the politicization of the Justice Department under President Bush went even deeper," the Boston Globe writes today. A report by the Justice Department Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that scores of highly qualified young lawyers and law students were denied interviews for the Department's Honors Program and Summer Law Internship Program (SLIP) because of political views and affiliations, indicating that "political appointees who are no longer with the department had violated department policy and the Civil Service Reform Act." The report is the first in a series of investigations resulting from the U.S. Attorney scandal, confirming "for the first time in an official examination" allegations that the Department had become overly-politicized under President Bush. "It appears the politicization at Justice was so pervasive that even interns had to pass a partisan litmus test," House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) observed.

GETTING RID OF THE 'ANARCHISTS': The process of filling honors and intern positions, "traditionally carried out by career attorneys in the department, was changed in 2002 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to give political appointees a role in screening applicants," in response to what some officials saw as a "liberal tilt" in recruiting young lawyers. Subsequently, in 2002, of 100 "liberals" nominated for the Honors Program, 80 percent were "deselected." But of 46 "conservatives" nominated, only 9 percent were "deselected." Esther McDonald, who left the department in 2007, sent colleagues a Nov. 29, 2006 e-mail complaining about "leftist commentary." McDonald repeatedly tried to root out "anarchists" or "leftists" in the application process. According to the report, McDonald gathered information to determine the politics of applicants by looking at blogs, MySpace pages, school newspapers, and old articles. "Membership in liberal organizations like the American Constitution Society, Greenpeace, or the Poverty and Race Research Action Council were also seen as negative marks," the Wall Street Journal noted. Complaints from career officials about the hiring process decreased after 2002 but flared up again in 2006, when candidates for the Honors Program, for example, were "weeded out at three times the rate of conservative-leaning applicants." Gonzales was appointed attorney general in 2005.

OLD PLAYERS REVISITED: Last year, Monica Goodling, a former aide to Gonzales, acknowledged that she had "taken inappropriate political considerations into account" while hiring career employees at the Department. The new report further implicates Goodling, revealing that she helped hire some of the officials who considered partisanship and ideology in the hiring process. For example, in 2006, she interviewed the relatively inexperienced McDonald, who was soon hired as Counsel to Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer.Weeks later, Mercer assigned her to the Honors Program/SLIP Screening Committee. Furthermore, Goodling directed Michael Elston to lead the selection committee in 2006. The Inspector General report criticized Elston "for failing to supervise McDonald and for weeding out candidates on his own based on 'impermissible considerations.'" In the U.S. Attorney scandal, Elston "assembled one of the lists of prosecutors to be considered for removal. Four of the dismissed prosecutors said they later received inappropriate telephone calls from Elston, who allegedly warned some of them that they would suffer retaliation if they spoke publicly about their firings."

A DEEPER PROBLEM?: Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday that using politics in hiring career lawyers was "impermissible and unacceptable" and that the department has implemented new procedures to remove politics from the hiring process. Nevertheless, the report raises larger questions about Justice Department politicization, specifically whether politics affected prosecutions. "The department's bald denials that politics never affected the cases under investigation simply cannot be taken at face value," said Conyers. Among those under scrutiny are prosecutions involving former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, Missouri Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., and Wisconsin state procurement official Georgia Thompson. As Stephen Hurley, an attorney representing Thompson, noted, "What they've said is politics played a role in personnel decisions. The question is did it play any role in decisions to prosecute." The inspector general is still investigating other issues related to alleged politicization of the Justice Department, including the central question of why nine U.S. attorneys were fired in late 2006.

Under the Radar

ENVIRONMENT -- INTEL REPORT LINKS GLOBAL WARMING WITH SECURITY, HUMANITARIAN RISKS: Yesterday, a report presented by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to a joint congressional hearing assessed climate change and its effect on future global destabilization and U.S. security interests. The report detailed significant problems that are likely to be exacerbated by global warming, such as "poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions." The report's authors warn that as many as 50 million additional people could be at risk of hunger by 2020, and 1.2 billion could suffer from water shortages. NIC Chairman Thomas Fingar cautioned legislators that these conditions could help foster a movement towards radical ideologies and might "increase the pool of potential recruits for terrorism." Fingar also pointed to U.S. infrastructure as ill-prepared for climate change, citing "two dozen nuclear facilities and numerous refineries along U.S. coastlines" which could be at risk by extreme weather. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has praised the subject of climate change and national security as "appropriate."

HUMAN RIGHTS -- GITMO DETAINEE'S LAWYER 'NOT ALLOWED TO TELL HIM' HE'S NO LONGER AN 'ENEMY COMBATANT': Nearly two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to habeas corpus and can thus challenge their detention in civilian courts, a U.S. Court of Appeals dealt another blow to the Bush administration's detention policy. The appeals court ruled last week that the Pentagon improperly designated Huzaifa Parhat, an ethnic Uighur Chinese national, an "enemy combatant" after being swept up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in 2001 and then sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held since. Despite the ruling, Parhat has yet to see any of its benefits. In fact, he doesn't even know about it. Parhat's lawyer told CBC radio that Parhat is currently being held in solitary confinement and "has no idea" that the appeals court ruled in his favor. "My client doesn't know about this ruling because I'm not allowed to tell him," said Parhat's lawyer, Sabin Willett. Currently, it is unclear what the appeals court's ruling actually means for Parhat. The New York Times noted that the United States "said it will not return Uighur detainees to China because of concerns about their treatment at the hands of the Chinese government, which views them as terrorists." Thus, as another one of Parhat's lawyers noted, the "court victory may not mean freedom for him." Willett says that for now, they're going to "file a motion with a judge" in an effort to "take him out of solitary confinement."

ECONOMY -- FORECLOSURE FORCING MIDDLE CLASS INTO HOMELESSNESS: A study by the National Coalition for the Homeless shows that the real estate crisis has pushed thousands of formerly working- and middle-class Americans into homelessness or near-homelessness. There were about two million foreclosures in 2007, the highest rate since data was first collected in 1979 -- affecting many middle-class families "who scarcely expected to find themselves unable to afford their homes." According to the study, which allowed those surveyed to indicate multiple answers, about 54 percent of displaced homeowners "are moving to emergency shelters. About 40% are already on the streets." Since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, "nearly 61% of local and state homeless coalitions say they've seen a rise in homelessness." And around two million children will "be directly affected by the subprime mortgage crisis as their families lose their homes to foreclosures," according to the advocacy group First Focus. Still, plans to provide relief to struggling Americans have stalled: yesterday, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) blocked a Senate bill to "help troubled borrowers save their homes," even though it has broad bipartisan support and Ensign's home state of Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Think Fast

75 percent: Americans who "blame President Bush's economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll."

"The number of Americans who would condone torture, at least when used on terrorists in order to save lives, has risen in the past two years to 44 percent, according to a poll." Still, a majority of Americans think all torture should be banned.

On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment denying money for President Bush's new "program to expand domestic use of Pentagon spy satellites," citing concerns about possible civil-liberties abuses. Congress will block the program’s funds until the Government Accountability Office "completes a report examining civil-liberties and privacy issues related to the domestic use of picture-taking spy satellites."

U.S. forces in Iraq are facing a "spike in deadly violence." Yesterday, a roadside bomb killed four soldiers, pushing "to at least nine the number of Americans who have died" in Iraq this week. A car bomb in Mosul also killed 18 people today, wounding 60.

The United States "will lift key trade sanctions against North Korea and remove it from the U.S. terrorism blacklist," President Bush announced this morning. The move, which is "a remarkable turnaround in policy," came after North Korea "handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials." "This is the first step. This isn’t the end of the process," said Bush in a Rose Garden press conference.

CQ writes that the Senate may not vote on FISA reform until after the Independence Day recess. "There are two things we have to do before we go home for July Fourth: housing and Medicare," Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said Tuesday. "We do not have to do, if the Republicans don't want to do it, we don't have to do FISA and we don't have to do the supplemental" spending measure for the wars.

And finally: Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) "held court" at the Cafe Japone karaoke bar in Washington, DC, on Tuesday night. With "a pink lei around his neck," Honda "raised his arm and hooted in support of a young staffer as she struggled through Fergie's 'Fergalicious.'" Honda, however, choose to sing "Moon River" in honor of his wedding anniversary. Politico reports that Honda first tried karaoke in 2001, "in an effort to overcome his fear of public speaking during his first days as a congressman."

Good News

"California will introduce a detailed plan on Thursday to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels in 12 years by requiring more energy-efficient appliances and buildings, lowering vehicle emissions and generating 33 percent of its energy from renewable sources."

State Watch

ARIZONA: State Senate rejects measures to ban same-sex marriage.

OKLAHOMA: "A new Oklahoma law slated to take effect Aug. 1 requires doctors to show a woman considering abortion an ultrasound image of her fetus and recite details of its development."

ALASKA: Plaintiffs in the long-running lawsuit against Exxon for its 1989 oil spill react to the Supreme Court decision cutting damages with "sorrow and rage."

Blog Watch

THINK PROGRESS: "President" Glenn Beck: I wouldn't detain terror suspects, I'd "shoot them all in the head."

WONK ROOM: Conservatives mount campaign to claim "Iraq war was worth it."

RAW STORY: Karl Rove criticizes the New York Times for "outing" a CIA agent.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: The Center for American Progress's Caroline Wadhams on how to approach Afghanistan policy.

Daily Grill

"Unless Members are willing to accept gas prices at today's painful levels...[Congress] should give the states the option of opening up OCS resources off their shores."
-- President Bush, 6/19/08

VERSUS

"[Offshore drilling] doesn't affect prices that much."
-- Energy Information Administration administrator Guy Caruso, 6/25/08