Discrimination Alleged At DoJ Civil Rights Dept.

In a perfect world (or even less than perfect) the civil rights division of the Department of Justice is supposed to fight racial strife where it shows its ugly head wherever and whenever within our country. Unfortunately under the Bush Administration, the trouble of race and discrimination is under it's very own roof.

From The Tri-State Defender:

Joi Hyatte, who works in the voting rights section, states in the lawsuit that her boss subjected her and other African American employees to “numerous forms of discrimination and harassment.”

The suit, filed May 29 in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleges that supervisors used special hiring programs to circumvent regular procedures and avoid giving African Americans on staff an opportunity to apply for analyst jobs.

Hyatte, a 13-year veteran of the department who received outstanding evaluations, says in the suit that she was “repeatedly denied the opportunity to apply and compete” for promotions because she is African American.

A few weeks after her suit was filed, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued its own report stating that applicant screeners for the department had illegally used political or ideological factors in a recruitment program, preferring law school graduates with conservative credentials to those with more liberal political ties.

Race may very well be a part of this but it seems to me that the corrupt and crony ways of the Administration trump everything that the Executive Branch stands for these days. Making sure the "right people" get well-paid means more than upholding the law when it comes to minority treatment, respecting the Hatch Act and anything else that may be written in the legal code to protect the government from itself. Ms. Hyatte deserves everything she wants and then some....as the rest of us deserve a Justice Department that serves the country and not the cronies within it.

Bush Broke The Law At DoJ....Will Something Be Done, Does Anyone Care?

Republicans are trying to minimize this, but now we have definitive proof that the Bush Administration politicized the Department of Justice from top to bottom. What they did was a violation of the laws of country and this needs to be pursued all the way from investigations to jail time for those guilty of crimes. But, since this is 2008 and the climate in Washington defers to the all-mighty King Executive authority. I'm as worked up as Dan, but I'm not too excited about our chances of actual justice.

Even Golf Can Be Corrupted By George Bush

Golf, like it or not, is one of America's pastime sports. Of course it came from Scotland, but so did baseball in a way. It has been played by many great Americans and tarnished by scandal as baseball has by the Black Sox controversy almost 90 years ago. It has also been played by a lot of blue blood bastards and George Bush and his dad H.W. are two to be counted among them. Thanks to the Bush family and their friends in the Department of Justice, another scandal has been added to the game.

From ABC News:

The Justice Department, in a decision by Flores, gave the money to the World Golf Foundation's First Tee program, even though Justice Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104 applicants. The allegations were first reported earlier this year by the trade journal Youth Today.

"I don't know why people insist on denigrating it, it's a sound program," Flores told ABC News.

Current and former Justice Department employees allege that Flores ignored the staff rankings in favor of programs that had political, social or religious connections to the Bush White House.

The honorary chairman of the First Tee program is former President George Bush. On a videotape presentation, the former President Bush praised the program for "serving others and building character and building values."

Golf may be a great game, but mixing politics into how youth programs get Federal dollars is called cronyism. Of course, that has been the mantra of the Bush Administration since they started wasting taxpayer dollars in January of 2001. In fact, nothing about George Bush has been about merit since the day he came out with the silver gold platinum spoon in his mouth as a babe.

FDNY Sued For Recruiting Discrimination

New York's bravest are being targeted for a discrimination suit that alleges the testing required join the FDNY is skewed to hurt minority's chances for getting the job. The Department of Justice filed the suit in Federal Court today against the city.

From WCBS-TV:

Captain Paul Washington is the past president of the Vulcan Society, a group that brought a lawsuit against the FDNY five years ago. That lawsuit was the basis of the current federal investigation.

"The fire department will be getting what it deserves for not having acted on their own. They have had more than enough opportunity," Washington told CBS 2 in April.

"The guy who gets the 99 or 100 on a test isn't going to be any better than the guy who gets the 80 or 75. The fire department knows that, the mayor's office knows that, everybody does," Washington adds. "They should not use that test as a barometer on who's going to get on the job or not."

Other major cities such as Los Angeles and Boston have 40 to 50 percent or more of their ranks filled with minorities. In New York that number is between 8 and 9 percent. The city claims that the suit is unwarranted and that the Fire Department has made changes to their policy to accept for people of color. Yet no real change has been seen yet since Paul Washington first filed a suit five years ago. It seems like the city is just stalling and because of that, what is left of our Justice Department is set to prosecute and achieve some equality for what is seen as the most honorable fire department in the world.

Gonzales Can't Get His Lies Straight

Generally when one tells a lie it isn't too hard to manage it, when it turns into 5 lies to cover the first one, it gets difficult. Yet when the lies are all over the place, and the people that know your secrets aren't allowed to talk to you, it starts getting insane. Thats why things are going crazy over at Alberto Gonzales' study room this past week.

From Newsweek:

April 16, 2007 issue - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has virtually wiped his public schedule clean to bone up for his long-awaited April 17 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—a session widely seen as a crucial test as to whether he will survive the U.S. attorney mess. But even his own closest advisers are nervous about whether he is up to the task. At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers—including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan—about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source. Asked for comment, Scolinos told NEWSWEEK: "This was the first session of this kind that we'd done."

Despite bringing out all the big guns to try and salvage his career, all the spinsters in the world can't help Gonzales when gets out in front of Senator Leahy and company. They are afraid of the Senate Judiciary Committee and it shows. The now former Justice Dept. aide Monica Goodling went so far as to compare them to the infamous Senator McCarthy from fifty years ago. Memo to Monica, this hardly a purge of suspected communists, this is about justice, or lack thereof at the Justice department.

Leahy To Go After Gonzales

Finally the day has come where the checks and balances in our government are being put back into place. After Gonzales denied and testified under oath to Congress that there was no politics involved when the DoJ fired 8 attorneys, it seems there will be payback. That payback will be in the form of Congressional oversight and subpoenas from the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

From Senator Leahy:

“The White House and the Attorney General have dodged Congress’s questions and ducked accountability as if they still were dealing with a rubberstamp Congress. They are discovering that those days are gone.

“I am outraged that the Attorney General was less than forthcoming with the Senate while under oath before the Judiciary Committee. It is deeply disturbing that this plan appears to have originated from high-ranking officials at the White House and executed in secret with a complicit Department of Justice.

“This is not how justice is served, nor is it how our system of checks and balances is designed to work. It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes in our justice system, and then to dust over the tracks. The President of the United States and the Attorney General are responsible for setting the moral standard for this Administration. Apparently this matter does not bother them but it does bother me, and we will summon whoever we need in our hearings to get to the bottom of this.”

That is exactly what we need to hear from the Democratic majority. You know that Arlen Specter would have never acted in such a diligent matter and it is only because the Democrats are back in charge that we are seeing the possibility of justice being served on Gonzales and the Department of Justice.