Affirmative Action at The Justice Department

Here's the New York Times story on the issue of preferred hiring at the Department of Justice:

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

So it was affirmative action for the idiots who couldn't get into Harvard, Stanford, Yale or Duke, huh? Because, let's face it--the best and the brightest rise to the top no matter what. If you're a smart lawyer, no matter where you went to school, that will show--provided there isn't a biased old-boys network systematically fucking you over and denying you the opportunities you deserve. (Hence, the reason why affirmative action was, and is, and always will be a good idea.)

I thought the Republican Party and conservatives as a whole were against affirmative action. Did I miss the moment where they decided that they had to give the also-rans and the kids who weren't smart enough to get into a top tier law school that extra leg up, that extra little push to enter the legal profession through the programs offered at the Justice Department? Does anyone else smell the hypocrisy on these cheap-suit wearing fools?

As I said earlier today, they'd better get rid of every single one of those Liberty University Law School Jerry's Kids and issue a course correction here. You cannot leave any of those people in the ranks of the Justice Department. It would be like leaving Gomer Pyle in charge of a SEAL team.

--WS