Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Digging Way, WAY Down In the Barrel

The witch hunt being conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee has gotten to the level of being, not just ridiculous, but downright hilarious.
But Ty Clevenger, a former Justice Department employee, said Schlozman ordered him to remove information identifying him as a Republican from his paperwork when he applied for a job.

Gee, just as we ask people to remove marital status, age, and anything else that is not relevant to the hiring process from their applications. Does that mean I'm trying to hire only older, single men with a thing for redheads?
Among those raising concerns is Joseph Rich, a 36-year veteran of the department, who left in 2005 after serving as head of the Civil Rights Division's section that deals with voting rights.

"The whole hiring process had been changed to put the decision-making in political appointees' hands, and it was clear it was being politicized in that manner," Rich told CNN......

Rich now works for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, a nonprofit organization that held a March forum on what it called the politicization of the Justice Department. He said he never saw Schlozman make decisions based on partisan factors -- but he said hiring was increasingly concentrated in the hands of political appointees.

So, in other words, Democrats believe that no one who is a political appointee should be allowed to hire Federal employees, since it would be "politicization".

That means every single Cabinet secretary, the Attorney General, the entire diplomatic corps of ambassadors, the various undersecretaries and Department leaders, and anyone else in the Federal government who was chosen by an elected official to serve in their position is not allowed any input into who works for them.

And finally, this is my favorite:
But leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday asked Schlozman to answer questions about his handling of voter-fraud cases, including a lawsuit he pursued after his predecessor refused to support it. The committee's chairman, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, and ranking Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said the case was dismissed by a federal judge who found "no evidence" to support it.

"We believe the committee would benefit from hearing directly from you in order to gain a better understanding of the role voter fraud may have played in the administration's decisions to retain or remove certain U.S. attorneys," they wrote.

Yes, because heaven forbid that US attorneys actually consider investigating voter fraud; that's too "politicized". They should be spending their time investigating "hate crimes" against privileged minorities, rather than looking at minor Federal issues like faking voter registrations.

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