DOJ favored politically conservative candidates in hiring: OIG report

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DOJ favored politically conservative candidates in hiring: OIG report

June 24, 2008 01:51:00 pm

[JURIST] The Department of Justice improperly granted preferential treatment to conservative candidates in assessing job and summer internship applications under a 2002 screening program, according to a Tuesday report [PDF text] by the DOJ Office of the Inspector General [official website]. It was found that political officials played a greater role in the department's hiring processes, supporting long-standing accusations by critics that the Bush administration sought to politicize the traditionally non-partisan department.

In 2002, many deselections were required because of budget constraints. The data showed that candidates with Democratic Party and liberal affiliations apparent on their applications were deselected at a significantly higher rate than candidates with Republican Party, conservative, or neutral affiliations. This pattern continued to exist when we compared a subset of academically highly qualified candidates from the three groups. However, we found no other evidence that the members of the Screening Committee intentionally considered political or ideological affiliations in making their deselections, and the Committee members all denied doing so. While we were unable to prove that any specific members intentionally made deselections based on these prohibited factors, the data indicated that the Committee considered political or ideological affiliations when deselecting candidates.
During the next 3 years, from 2003 to 2005, the Screening Committee made few deselections, and we found no evidence that deselections were made based on political or ideological affiliations.
However, we found that in 2006 the Screening Committee inappropriately used political and ideological considerations to deselect many candidates. We determined that a disproportionate number of the deselected Honors Program and SLIP candidates had liberal affiliations as compared to the candidates with conservative affiliations. This pattern was also apparent when we examined the data for membership in the liberal American Constitution Society compared to the conservative Federalist Society for SLIP candidates and when we compared applicants with Democratic Party affiliations versus Republican Party affiliations for both Honors Program and SLIP candidates. The disproportionate pattern was also apparent when we examined candidates who were highly qualified academically.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned [JURIST report] last year amidst related allegations concerning the alleged firing of US Attorneys for political reasons [JURIST news archive]. AP has more. The New York Times has additional coverage.

Top Democrats criticized the Bush administration for interfering in DOJ hiring practices. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) [official website] called on current Attorney General Michael Mukasey to implement the report's recommendations [press release]; Mukasey said in a Tuesday statement that he is already working to do so. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official website] said [press release] that further anticipated reports would "shed light on the extent to which the Bush administration has allowed politics to affect – and infect – the Department’s priorities, from law enforcement to the operation of the crucial Civil Rights Division to the Department’s hiring practices."

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.