Alberto R. Gonzales on the Resignation of Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-23-2007/0004650752&EDATE=

Statement of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the Resignation of Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim



WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Wan J. Kim, Assistant
Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, today
announced his resignation, effective at the end of this month. President
Bush nominated Mr. Kim to the position on June 16, 2005, and the Senate
unanimously confirmed his appointment on November 4, 2005. Mr. Kim, whose
career in the Department of Justice has spanned more than a decade, started
in the Department of Justice Honors Program as a trial attorney in the
Criminal Division, and later served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the
District of Columbia.

"For over a decade now, Wan Kim has served the Department of Justice
and the American people with distinction and honor," said Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales. "Starting as a young attorney in the Honors Program,
Wan has worked his way up through the Department, and I will miss his
honest opinions and valuable contributions as an advisor to me."

During Mr. Kim's tenure, the Civil Rights Division set record levels of
enforcement in a broad range of areas, which included obtaining the highest
number of criminal convictions in a single year in the past two decades;
filing more than twice the average number of voting rights lawsuits in one
year than were filed annually over the past 30 years; and filing as many
lawsuits to challenge a pattern or practice of employment discrimination in
one year as during the last three years of the previous Administration
combined. Mr. Kim also supervised major initiatives in the areas of human
trafficking prosecutions, housing discrimination, religious liberties and
the Americans with Disabilities Act. Other notable accomplishments include
the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006; lawsuits against
several financial institutions for discrimination in lending; the
investigation and prosecution of cold cases from the Civil Rights Era; and
numerous cases to protect the rights of persons in institutional
facilities.

[Botany]

1. What did he do?

I smell a Bradly Scholzman connection here.

[OzarkDem]

2. Hatch Act problems?

We're getting to the end of the August recess. The next week should be very interesting.

[Botany]

4. Maybe but the Dept. of Justice fired almost everyone in the Civil Rights ...

..... Division that wanted to enforce the law as per voting. Scholzman replaced
anybody who wasn't a bushie with a "good American" .... so if the blacks don't
get their vote counted who are "they" going to complain to?

I think Mr. Kim was in this operation .... Scholzman just quit .... Kim will try
to get out of Dodge ASAP .... maybe to Korea (no need for those hearings)
and then to a Republican Law Firm.

[seemslikeadream]

3. evade the accountability

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/washington/24resign.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1188144003-/bEwLD1m1743vAM7bo7ZJg

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — The head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division announced Thursday that he was resigning, the latest in a long string of departures from the department in the midst of a furor over the leadership of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The department said that the resignation of the official, Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, had nothing to do with the recent controversies over Mr. Gonzales’s performance, and that Mr. Kim had been planning his departure for months.

His departure was announced on the same day that department officials confirmed that a senior official who preceded Mr. Kim in running the civil rights division, Bradley J. Schlozman, had also resigned.

In Senate testimony two months ago, Mr. Schlozman, who was interim director of the division in 1993, acknowledged that he had actively recruited conservative Republican applicants to work in the division and that he had rewritten the performance evaluations of career lawyers who were not considered loyal to the Bush administration.

Mr. Kim, who has worked in the Justice Department for most of his career, has led the civil rights division since November 2005. Although Congressional Democrats and civil rights groups have accused the division of abandoning its commitment to protection of minority rights under President Bush, Mr. Kim was not personally singled out for criticism.

In a statement on Mr. Kim’s resignation, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and one of the administration’s strongest critics on the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not mention Mr. Kim by name. Instead, the senator attacked the department as a whole.

“The Bush Department of Justice has failed our country,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Too many officials have resigned to evade the accountability that is to come for the disastrously flawed policies of this administration.”

[bahrbearian]

5. Good thing they got Tommy Chong off the streets.