Under Republicans, Justice Department took partisan turn
The U.S. Justice Department is easily the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country. If used for the wrong purposes, its ability to commit the vast resources of the federal government against an individual or group can do great damage to lives and careers.Using a department of the government meant enforce the laws of the land without prejudice for a partisan political agenda? Sounds a little tyrannical doesn't it, almost like something communist dictator Stalin might do. By all means let's bring back that good old time conservative tyranny in 2010.
For that reason, laws and rules have been adopted to prevent the hijacking of the Justice Department to advance a partisan or ideological cause. Those laws exist to protect the principle that the law must be applied equally to all Americans, regardless of party, and that government should never be used as a weapon against those who dare to oppose the party in power.
But that's exactly what the Bush administration has done.
"It's a tragedy because, for many years, the only agency that really had a standing as the untouchable agency from partisan politics was the Justice Department," says David Iglesias, a former U.S. attorney and stalwart Republican fired because he refused to use his authority for partisan purposes. "And unfortunately, what's happened over the past couple of years has tarred it with a very, very ugly brush. ... It's a serious problem. The American people have the right to believe that 'prosecutive' decisions are made on the basis of evidence alone. And right now, that's called into question."
The campaign to turn the Justice Department into an enforcement arm of the Republican Party extended even to its hiring of legal interns. By federal law and by longtime tradition, legal internships at the Justice Department had been awarded strictly on the basis of merit. But in the Bush administration, the program was illegally hijacked.
Well-qualified students deemed to have some sort of hidden liberal bent were systematically rejected; less qualified students with poorer academic records but a record of conservative activism were hired instead. It was affirmative action for the dumb but partisan.
The right-wing response to such charges will be that everyone does it. No, everyone does not do it. Before the Bush administration, nobody did it. Before the Bush administration, politicians of both parties had too much respect for the law and the power of the agency to stoop to such intellectual corruption. Administrations would come and go, both Republican and Democratic, and none of them attempted anything like what the Bush administration tried to do at the Justice Department.
According to a new report by the Justice Department's inspector general -- a Republican, by the way -- the Bush approach "constituted misconduct and also violated the department's policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations."
In other words, those appointed to enforce the law instead knowingly violated it to advance partisan interests.
The internship program is a relatively minor scandal, but it says a lot about the mind-set inside the Bush Justice Department. Other investigations are under way into far more serious allegations made by Iglesias and others.
For example, did Bush officials use the department's immense prosecutorial power to attack their enemies? Did they try to influence elections through selective or timely prosecutions? Were U.S. attorneys -- good Republicans all -- removed because they clung to the notion that the law and those who enforce it should be nonpartisan?
Yes, they probably were.
"It's reprehensible. It's unethical. It's unlawful. It very well may be criminal," Iglesias said in a PBS interview. "I know it's a marked departure from prior administrations, both Republican and Democrat, who understood that U.S. attorneys, as chief federal law enforcement officials, have to stay out of politics."
The days of the Bush administration grow few in number, and as they do, tongues will start flapping a little more freely. I expect we'll start hearing stories of even more atrocious abuses of power by the Bush administration. But what we already know is enough to label it the worst administration in our nation's history.
