A Government of Laws

The Boston Globe reports that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is being filled with lawyers who have no experience in civil rights, but strong conservative credentials.

This is not just another subtle power grab by the people in power; it represents a basic volte face in the way the Division is staffed. As The Globe's Charlie Savage (who has become one of the best political reporters in America) put it:

"[O]nly 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds. In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants not political appointees.

"But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers."

Instead of using professionals to hire for this most politically-sensitive branch of the Justice Department, the Bush administration has turned to political appointees--meaning that the line jobs in the Division are also, in effect, political appointments. Worse, these political hirees are given civil service protection, so that it will be almost impossible for an administration that is actually devoted to civil rights to remove them.

This hiring pattern has led to--or, at least, been part of--a change in the way civil rights are defined by the Justice Departments. Savage reports, "At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians."

Now, anyone who thinks the primary victims of discrimination in this country are whites and Christians has a highly warped view of society.

And W wonders why Black American's aren't flocking to the GOP.

Meanwhile, a prestigious committee of the ABA has castigated Bush for "flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed." The specific subject of the Committee's report is presidential "signing statements," the attempt by the executive (in fairness, not originated by Bush, but used by him more than all his predecessors combined) to interpret the laws that the President signs. The bar association committee likened these statements, as used by the present administration, to a line-item veto--a concept much beloved by certain Republicans, but declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The ABA committee is not some left-wing conclave. Its members include Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman, Bruce Fein, who was a Justice Department official under Ronald Reagan, and William S. Sessions, former federal judge and Director of the FBI.

And to think that Republicans used to present themselves as the party of law and order. Of course, that was before Watergate.

In an update on this story, Sen. Arlen Specter said he will introduce a bill that would permit Congress to sue the President, with the object of having signing statements declared unconstitutional. Given Specter's long record of spinelessness (if the junior senator from the Keystone State is Senator Sanctimonious, the senior is Sen. Spineless), I hold out little hope for this; most likely, the Republicans have already determined to shoot the measure down, or block it in the House. But, believing in the endless possibility of redemption happening, I must summon optimism that the sweet light of reason has shone upon Sen. Specter, and this time he really means it.