Obama Justice Department Re-Hires Attorney fired because of lesbian rumor

By GottaLaff

This is more like it:

In April 2008, NPR reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether [Leslie] Hagen was fired after a rumor reached former Justice Department official Monica Goodling that she was a lesbian. [...]

Last night, however, NPR reported the good news that Obama Justice Department has re-hired Hagen for old position:

Last year, the Justice Department posted Hagen’s old job again. The department conducted a national search. Applications came in from around the country. After several rounds of interviews, Hagen eventually won the job.

The paperwork makes it official as of Monday, Feb. 2. Hagen now has her old position back, but this time it’s a little different. Her contract no longer comes up for renewal every year. Now, the job is permanent.

I just love a happy ending.

Lawsuit Filed Against Gonzales & DOJ Officials

By GottaLaff

The last resort:

Six attorneys rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration in the hiring process.

The suit is an attempt to hold top officials accountable for the hiring scandal that ultimately led to Gonzales' resignation last year, said Daniel Metcalfe, the attorney for the plaintiffs who is also executive director of its Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University's Washington College of Law.

"My clients wish that they hadn't had to bring this lawsuit -- they would have greatly preferred to be working inside the Justice Department, where by all rights they deserved to be, defending the government in court rather than standing as victimized examples of government wrongdoing," said Metcalfe, a former longtime Justice Department official. [...]

Today's amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, broadens the suit to include Gonzales; Monica Goodling, former White House Liaison; Michael Elston, former chief of staff to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; and Esther McDonald, former counsel to Gonzales.

In it, the attorneys allege that top officials violated the applicants' privacy and due process through the politicized hiring process in the Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program.

The suit alleges that in vetting candidates' political affiliations -- in part by Googling their names in connection with any political activity -- the officials violated privacy rules requiring that applicants' files maintain no additional information about the individuals' political activity. The department's failure to fully address this "reveal defendant Department of Justice's utterly unredeemable obliviousness to its legal obligations, and its remarkably recidivistic failures to meet them, in the first place," the complaint states.

The suit also argues that a wholesale shift in taking political ideology into account in hiring for the civil service positions violated the applicants' constitutional rights. [...]

Lawsuits seeking to hold top officials civilly liable for acts done during their tenure in government often face difficultly in court, such as the recent case seeking to hold top military officials including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accountable for the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But if successful, the lawsuit may be the only legal consequences these officials face.

Every time I hear Jonathan Turley discuss this (and similar issues) on Countdown, it's so excruciating that I tear up. Look what our system of justice has turned into. Heartbreaking.

Justice Department Engaged In Illegal Hiring Practices

Sad that the little guy (again) is taking the fall since we all know the rot starts at the head.

A new Justice Department report concludes that politics illegally influenced the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges, and largely lays the blame on top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Monday’s report singles out the department’s former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren’t Republican or conservative loyalists.

In early 2006, Goodling directed an assistant attorney general to give her unprecedented authority to hire and fire political staffers “outside the system.” In March 2006, Gonzales signed a highly confidential order delegating to his then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and Goodling “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.

Video is Countdown's take on the hearings.