Justice Department pushed aside three minority women to "make room for some good Americans"

[dajoki]

Senators Deride Justice Reassignments
Prosecutor Firings and Staff Decisions Draw Hill Criticism

By Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 22, 2007; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102291.html?nav=rss_politics

Democratic senators responded caustically yesterday to reports that a former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division pushed aside three minority women on his staff to "make room for some good Americans," as the lawmakers implored his successor to remove all political taint from the agency's work.

Wan Kim, the current assistant attorney general for civil rights, distanced himself from the hiring practices and statements in 2005 of his predecessor, Bradley J. Schlozman, and said he first heard of them hours before they were reported in The Washington Post this week. "At a very minimum, those are intemperate, inopportune remarks," said Kim, the division's second-in-command at the time

The consternation over the removal of government civil rights lawyers erupted in the Senate as Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty defended himself in the House against allegations he had misled Congress about the firings last year of nine U.S. attorneys.

Although Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has told lawmakers that McNulty was the aide most responsible for the firings, McNulty continued yesterday to say that he played a minimal role in the dismissals and had little direct contact with Gonzales over the matter. Still, McNulty, who has announced he will resign this summer, also provided further evidence of possible partisan considerations in the firings, telling a House Judiciary subcommittee that complaints from a senior Republican senator contributed to the removal of one U.S. attorney.

<<snip>>

In the Senate yesterday, Democrats seized on the report that Schlozman had, while acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, removed the female lawyers -- against their supervisors' advice -- as new evidence that the Justice Department under President Bush has been infected by improper political considerations.

[izzie]

1. and they do not pick thinking like that from the air.

I am willing to bet you all will jump on me, but picking a Jew, women or blackman to run in this country will not do great with thinking like that still around. It is to bad new thinking did not come in to use as fast as it takes for the bad ones to hang around and taint things.

[dajoki]

4. Its a sad fact of life...

that thinking and actions like this still go on in this country.

[izzie]

5. It is hard not to drag our thinking from parent to child.

My father was brought up by his grand mother who was born in 1851. She and her husband were old when they took these kids and I am sure she and her husband had beliefs we would not even think about and I am sure some have turned up in me as my father handed them down. Odd that he was such a Republican yet church and state were to stay our of the govt. and it was a thing with him. We had booklet on the coffee table about the evils of mixing the two together. I am sure that came right out of our family history of being New England Puritans for a few hundred years. Since some thing like that can stay with in a family for so long not wanting a women, Jew, or black man I am sure would hang around also. Thank God my father's view on women were this. They need more education than men as they bring up the children and always need their own bank acct. I never knew I was classed not as good as any man until I married.

[martymar64]

2. Racism, as American as Baseball, HotDogs and the Lynch Mob

n/t

[draft_mario_cuomo]

3. More evidence of repuke racism nt