June 11, 2007

Your "Culture of Corruption" for June 11, 2007

I suppose some new revelation about how low this administration has sunk shouldn't surprise anyone at this point. And, to be honest, I'm not really surprised by this. Still, what's one more scandal at the Justice Department at this point. Gonzalez doesn't have anything else to do, right? Via the WaPo:

The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show.

(snip)

That year is when the Justice Department began to jettison the civil service process that traditionally guided the selections in favor of political considerations, according to sworn congressional testimony by one senior department official and a statement by the lawyer for another official.

Those two officials, D. Kyle Sampson and Monica M. Goodling, have said they were told the practice was legal. But Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said that immigration judges are considered civil service employees who may not be chosen based on political factors, unlike judges in federal criminal courts.

All the judges appointed during this period who arrived with experience in immigration law were prosecutors or held other immigration enforcement jobs. That was a reversal of a trend during the Clinton administration in which the Justice Department sought to balance such appointees with ones who had been attorneys representing immigrants, according to current and former immigration judges.

Not really surprising that this administration would play fast-and-loose with the immigration system. I'm more surprised it took this long to discover it. Did you notice the double-whammy here? Justice is taking unqualified people to be immigration judges (that's the meat of the scandal), but even those qualified (who have some background in immigration law) are only coming from the prosecutor/enforcement side - no one who defended or worked for the immigrants seems to have been qualified to serve as a judge. I'd say "shocking," but it really isn't.

How many days are left in this guy's term?

Posted by baltar at June 11, 2007 08:54 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Corruption | Extremism | Law and the Courts | Politics | Shine the Light on It


Comments

588? Far too long.

Posted by: Armand at June 11, 2007 10:01 AM | PERMALINK
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