A report released Tuesday by the Justice Department has documented the Bush administration's unprecedented -- and illegal -- effort to politicize the ranks of the agency's prosecutors and civil service employees with conservatives and true believers in the religious right's agenda.
Under then-Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, a thirtysomething lawyer named Monica M. Goodling -- a graduate of a law school founded by Pat Robertson -- had virtual veto power over the appointment of U.S. attorneys, other prosecutors and immigration judges. Goodling, as the Washington Post reported, demanded that candidates "espouse conservative priorities and Christian lifestyle choices," especially on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. The goal, according to the report, was to create a Republican "farm system" inside the Justice Department.
While Goodling was pursuing that mission, something not dissimilar was going on at the White House. According to an article by New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer in the latest New York Review of Books, "President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and a small handful of trusted advisors sought and obtained dubious legal opinions [on national security] enabling them to circumvent American laws and traditions." She details how they used these legal opinions to dramatically expand executive power.
When the next administration and Congress begin the urgent work of sorting out precisely how and why the Bush-Cheney regime systematically undermined the rule of law, there are a couple of things that ought to be kept in mind.
One is that their efforts were essentially ideological rather than partisan. That's an important distinction, because although those involved in the White House campaign to subvert legal safeguards of all sorts obviously were Republicans, many Republicans working inside the administration -- some of them deeply conservative -- gave up their jobs rather than go along with the putsch.
Former Assistant Atty. Gen. Jack Goldsmith, who did heroic work trying to undo the mischief wrought by John Yoo, his predecessor in the Office of Legal Counsel, is one of those. His offense was to tell then-vice presidential counsel David Addington -- now Cheney's chief of staff -- that, despite Yoo's obliging opinions, U.S. law does not permit torture.
