Bush Justice's shame


When former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left Washington last 
year in professional disgrace, his critics said he allowed the 
Department of Justice to be wrecked by partisan politics. This week, 
an internal Justice Department investigation revealed just how badly 
politics corrupted the agency on Mr. Gonzales' watch.

The investigation by the department's inspector general and its 
ethics office found that a small circle of Gonzales aides – in 
particular, the zealous conservative Monica Goodling – improperly, 
and in violation of federal law, used political criteria in making 
hiring positions for non-political jobs.

The report found that they turned down qualified applicants for 
important civil service posts because the job seekers were deemed 
politically unreliable. In one especially egregious example, young 
Ms. Goodling nixed a counterterrorism expert for one position, which 
went to a less qualified Republican. Why? The better man was married 
to a Democrat.

You'd think that an administration humiliated by putting a 
politically connected horse industry executive in charge of the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency would have learned its lesson.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Remember when George W. Bush, 
elected in the wake of the Clinton scandals, talked about how he was 
going to change Washington for the better? For those who believed him 
and believed in him, the corruption of the Justice Department under 
his administration is a real blow.

Putting partisanship over professionalism, cronyism over competence, 
has political consequences. It's gotten so bad for Republicans this 
year that nine of the 12 most vulnerable Senate GOPers running for re-
election this fall have either declined to go to the party's 
convention, or haven't made up their minds. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, 
just indicted on corruption charges, is among that desolate bunch.

All but one of the Justice Department aides who made this mess are 
gone, but their ignominious legacy is one more reason why the 
president's party is in a tailspin.

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