{"id":952,"date":"2008-06-24T09:23:33","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T13:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=952"},"modified":"2008-06-24T11:57:32","modified_gmt":"2008-06-24T15:57:32","slug":"ashcrofts-long-term-damage-to-the-doj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/06\/24\/ashcrofts-long-term-damage-to-the-doj\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashcroft&#8217;s Long Term Damage to the DOJ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is something I&#8217;ve long suspected, but soon we&#8217;ll be sure about it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>High-ranking political appointees at the Justice Department labored to stock a prestigious hiring program with young conservatives in a five-year-long attempt to reshape the department&#8217;s ranks, according to an inspector general&#8217;s report to be released today.<\/p>\n<p>The report will trace the effort to 2002, early in the Bush administration, when key advisers to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft moved to exert more control over the program to hire rookie lawyers and summer interns, according to two people familiar with the probe.<\/p>\n<p>The honors program, which each year places about 150 law school graduates with top credentials in a rotation of Justice jobs, historically had operated under the control of senior career officials.<\/p>\n<p>[ . . . ]<\/p>\n<p>Critics in the department had argued that hundreds of high-quality applicants had been rejected because of their ties to left-leaning nonprofit groups or clerkships with Democratic judges and lawmakers, according to correspondence at the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They&#8217;ll be there long after this Administration is gone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: TPM is finding lots of fun stuff in the report, but I think <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2008\/06\/emails_from_former_us_attorney.php\">this email<\/a> (which is sent by a US Attorney to a DOJ official vetting the applications) illustrates it pretty well:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My initial reaction is that the guy is probably quite liberal. He is clerking for a very activist, ATLA-oriented justice. His law review article appears to favor reintroduction of wolves on federal lands, a very controversial issue here which pits environmentalists against lots of other interests, including virtually all conservative and moderate thinkers. I know of better candidates through our internship and clerkship programs who have applied to the honors program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is something I&#8217;ve long suspected, but soon we&#8217;ll be sure about it: High-ranking political appointees at the Justice Department labored to stock a prestigious hiring program with young conservatives in a five-year-long attempt to reshape the department&#8217;s ranks, according to an inspector general&#8217;s report to be released today. The report will trace the effort [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-policy","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}