A little background first. With Alberto Gonzales in deep and hot water over the attorney purge, attention has turned to Monica Goodling. Goodling was scheduled to testify before congress in the case, but invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.
There's a little hitch there. Goodling cites the politically charged and "perilous environment" of the House and Senate judiciary committees as her reason. A lot of people are wondering why she thinks she can get away with that. The fifth protects you from incriminating yourself in a crime. It wouldn't make any difference if the hearings were a partisan witchhunt, she can't refuse to testify because she doesn't like 'the atmosphere.'
And the attention on Goodling is bringing attention to a Justice Dept. that's been blatantly politicized since Bush took office. According to Lithwick's piece:
A 1995 graduate of Messiah College, an evangelical Christian school, and a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, Goodling is an improbable character for a political scandal. Her chief claim to professional fame appears to have been loyalty to the president and to the process of reshaping the Justice Department in his image (and, thus, His image). A former career official there told The Washington Post that Goodling "forced many very talented career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points." And as she rose at Justice, a former classmate said, Goodling "developed a very positive reputation for people coming from Christian schools into Washington looking for employment in government, always ready to offer encouragement and be a sounding board."
Goodling is a typical Bush Justice official. The idea was to stop pursuing actual crimes and start looking into BS that never happens -- as a priority. Lithwick again:
One of [then-Attorney General John] Ashcroft's most profound changes was to the Civil Rights Division, started in 1957 to fight racial discrimination in voting. Under Ashcroft, career lawyers were systematically fired or forced out and replaced by members of conservative or Christian groups or folks with no civil rights experience. In the five years after 2001, the Civil Rights Division brought no voting cases -- and only one employment case -- on behalf of an African American. Instead, the division took up the "civil rights" abuses of reverse discrimination -- claims of voter fraud or discrimination against Christians. On Feb. 20, Gonzales announced a new initiative called the First Freedom Project to carry out "even greater enforcement of religious rights for all Americans." In his view, the fight for a student's right to read a Bible in school is as urgent as the right to vote.
Gonzales likewise focused resources on crap by making fighting pornography a priority -- not child pornography, mind you, just naked people doing stuff that naked people do. I guess all this 'war on terror' stuff includes protecting people who are terrified by naked boobs...
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