WH nominates "movement conservatives" to top positions at DOJ. Mukasey is irrelevant.

[seafan]

Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine sounds the alarm that the new Attorney General Michael Mukasey will be unable "to rein in the process of partisan exploitation of the administration of justice that his predecessors unleashed."


Horton begins by describing the renewed probe into the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPA) regarding the advice given on warrantless wiretapping with regard to the FISA statute. The White House had previously shut down this investigation.

Word of this renewed investigation so excited the Democrats as Mukasey's confirmation slipped through. Horton wryly notes that the decision by the White House to resume the probe was entered before Mukasey was confirmed.

Further, the scope of the OPR's activities are very narrow, focusing on 'professional ethics', which are weasel words in this administration. So, there will be nothing more than continued obfuscation by the White House with this 'renewed probe.'



Then, Horton notes, a much larger and more sinister threat looms beneath the pomp and circumstance of Mukasey's confirmation:

Bush, the Movement Conservatives and Justice: The Pact

But a far more serious concern from Mukasey’s first week goes to nominations to fill the numerous senior vacancies in the Department of Justice. A well-placed source informed me at the time of Mukasey’s hearing that the President Bush, who is deeply committed to “keeping the base happy,” had struck a compact of sorts with disgruntled “movement conservatives” who wanted to see Ted Olson become attorney general. (1) They would get a private meeting with Mukasey (that occurred, and has been reported on in some more depth in a recent column by Sid Blumenthal.) (2) Bush would personally address the Federalist Society’s annual meeting (that also occurred). And (3) the major open vacancies at the top of Justice would be filled with “movement conservatives,” limiting the risk that Mukasey would be able to set much of a new course.

The White House’s announcement on Thursday of five new appointments to the Justice Department appears to me to be the fulfillment of the third pledge. I haven’t had much time to study the individuals in question, but at first blush, most appear to be just what was promised: a “movement conservative.” That phrase is used to refer to an individual who is highly ideological, usually associated with the Federalist Society or a similarly partisan organization, and who is deeply engaged in partisan politics. The probe of the U.S. Attorneys firings revealed a series of criteria that Rove, Miers and their counterparts at Justice were using to pick new U.S. Attorneys. Will they be “loyal Bushies?” And here were the criteria: are they party members? Do they work in election campaigns? Do they give money to Republican causes? Are they members of the Federalist Society, or a similar party organization, with a track record of active participation? For whom did they clerk? This was a test designed to identify persons willing to betray their office for political purposes. And looking over the list of nominees, it is hard to resist asking whether the same criteria were applied to pick candidates that Kyle Sampson would have discussed with Karl Rove. Here are the nominees:

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For Deputy Attorney General, the number two slot: Mark R. Filip. He has a long record of political engagement in electoral trenches for the Republican Party (as the Chicago Tribune reports, he volunteered to work on the Bush-Cheney Florida vote litigation in 2000, for instance). He served as Vice President of the Federalist Society chapter at his law school. He clerked for Antonin Scalia and is close to Solicitor General Paul Clement. Critics of the Bush Justice Department regularly cite a secret subterranean network of former clerks of three judges (Scalia, Thomas and Silberman) who are highly partisan political ideologues, and who routinely shape policy and decisions outside of the formal channels of bureaucratic communication.
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For Associate Attorney General, the number three slot: Kevin J. O’Connor. He was U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, who came in to serve as the attorney general’s chief of staff at the height of the scandal surrounding Gonzales.
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To head the highly embattled Civil Rights Division: Grace Chung Becker. She has a long track record of political partisanship, especially advocating Republican Party positions on voting-rights issues. Even while serving at the Justice Department (she is at the Civil Rights Division now), she has continued as a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, where she is listed as an active contact on major matters. At Justice, she would have responsibility for addressing questions relating to voting fraud, caging, voter dilution on which her political organization, is actively engaged. Her attitudes can also be gauged from a speech she delivered a month ago to a bar association in which she said “it was an ‘exciting’ time to work in the Civil Rights Division because the Attorney General made civil rights a top priority within the Department of Justice.”
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To head the Civil Division: Gregory Katsas. Mr. Katsas also has a long track record of engagement in G.O.P. politics, and clerked for Justice Thomas. He is a principle architect of the Bush Administration’s legal policies relating to Guantánamo. He advocated and continues to strongly defend the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus–as he told the Chicago Tribune last month, “We think it’s defensible on the law and we think it’s defensible on the basis of national security.”

(bold type added)



By the way, has anyone seen the outgoing acting AG Peter Keisler?




Absolutely NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Only the faces are different.

Thanks, Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein. When you had the chance to restore justice, you frittered it away. Both of you are fools.




The ONLY WAY TO STOP this malignant perversion of the US Constitution and the rule of law in this country is to impeach this uncontrolled executive and his Vice President, and remove both of them from office.

"It's called impeachment. You don't wait. You do it now. Impeach them now." ----Representative Dennis Kucinich, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/politics/15debate-transcript.html">November 15, 2007