[AGL] Fwd: [FedUp] if they appear moderate, look again
michelemason
coltrane at ev1.net
Tue Jul 25 08:46:52 EDT 2006
Geezzz Francis, its been happening bit by bit for years. Gives me the
creeps—just about ready to go. mm
On Jul 24, 2006, at 2:46 PM, Frances Morey wrote:
> Truthout also picked up on this troubling piece of investigative
> journalism. "One Party Country: The way the Authoritarian party aka
> Republican party plans to dominate in the 21st Century" coming up on
> NPR at 3:00 p.m. It scares me to think this is happening.
> Frances
>
> Dan Thibodeau <djthibodeau at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Subject: [FedUp] if they appear moderate, look again
>>
>>
>> Ever resourceful, the right never takes no for an answer.
>>
>> A few days ago the voting rights act was renewed and Bush stood
>> before the NAACP and patted himself and fellow Republicans on the
>> back. Meanwhile, as the article below shows, enforcement of civil
>> rights is being turned inside out. Why oppose a popular law or
>> program when you can just ignore it (signing statements), starve it
>> to death (public lands), or use the funds for other purposes (civil
>> rights, social security “reform”, etc.) ?
>>
>> Longish article, but worth the full read – highlighted below.
>>
>> -Dan
>>
>> ---------------------------
>>
>> CIVIL RIGHTS HIRING SHIFTED IN BUSH ERA
>> Boston Globe
>> Author(s): Charlie Savage, Globe Staff Date: July 23, 2006 Page:
>> A1 Section: National/Foreign
>> WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice
>> Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with
>> lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little
>> experience in civil rights, according to job application materials
>> obtained by the Globe.
>> The documents show that only 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.
>> For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes,
>> interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only
>> rarely rejected.
>> Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political
>> appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs
>> into politically appointed positions.
>> The profile of the lawyers being hired has since changed
>> dramatically, according to the resumes of successful applicants to
>> the voting rights, employment litigation, and appellate sections.
>> Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Globe obtained the resumes
>> among hundreds of pages of hiring data from 2001 to 2006.
>> Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds either civil rights
>> litigators or members of civil rights groups have plunged. Only 19 of
>> the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were
>> experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their
>> experience either by defending employers against discrimination
>> lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.
>> Meanwhile, conservative credentials have risen sharply. Since 2003
>> the three sections have hired 11 lawyers who said they were members
>> of the conservative Federalist Society. Seven hires in the three
>> sections are listed as members of the Republican National Lawyers
>> Association, including two who volunteered for Bush-Cheney campaigns.
>> Several new hires worked for prominent conservatives, including
>> former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, former attorney general
>> Edwin Meese, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, and Judge Charles
>> Pickering. And six listed Christian organizations that promote
>> socially conservative views.
>> The changes in those three sections are echoed to varying degrees
>> throughout the Civil Rights Division, according to current and former
>> staffers.
>> 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.
>> "There has been a sea change in the types of cases brought by the
>> division, and that is not likely to change in a new administration
>> because they are hiring people who don't have an expressed interest
>> in traditional civil rights enforcement," said Richard Ugelow, a
>> 29-year career veteran who left the division in 2002.
>> No `litmus test' claimed
>> The Bush administration is not the first to seek greater control over
>> the Civil Rights Division. Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan
>> tried to limit the division's efforts to enforce school
>> desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. But neither Nixon nor
>> Reagan pushed political loyalists deep in the permanent bureaucracy,
>> longtime employees say.
>> The Bush administration denies that its changes to the hiring
>> procedures have political overtones. Cynthia Magnuson, a Justice
>> Department spokeswoman, said the division had no "litmus test" for
>> hiring. She insisted that the department hired only "qualified
>> attorneys."
>> Magnuson also objected to measuring civil rights experience by
>> participation in organizations devoted to advancing traditional civil
>> rights causes. She noted that many of the division's lawyers had been
>> clerks for federal judges, where they "worked on litigation involving
>> constitutional law, which is obviously relevant to a certain degree."
>> Other defenders of the Bush administration say there is nothing
>> improper about the winner of a presidential election staffing
>> government positions with like-minded officials. And, they say, the
>> old career staff at the division was partisan in its own way an
>> entrenched bureaucracy of liberals who did not support the
>> president's view of civil rights policy.
>> Robert Driscoll, a deputy assistant attorney general over the
>> division from 2001 to 2003, said many of the longtime career civil
>> rights attorneys wanted to bring big cases on behalf of racial groups
>> based on statistical disparities in hiring, even without evidence of
>> intentional discrimination. Conservatives, he said, prefer to focus
>> on cases that protect individuals from government abuses of power.
>> Hiring only lawyers from civil rights groups would "set the table for
>> a permanent left-wing career class," Driscoll said.
>> But Jim Turner, who worked for the division from 1965 to 1994 and was
>> the top-ranked professional in the division for the last 25 years of
>> his career, said that hiring people who are interested in enforcing
>> civil rights laws is not the same thing as trying to achieve a
>> political result through hiring.
>> Most people interested in working to enforce civil rights laws happen
>> to be liberals, Turner said, but Congress put the laws on the books
>> so that they would be enforced. "To say that the Civil Rights
>> Division had a special penchant for hiring liberal lawyers is
>> twisting things," he said.
>> Jon Greenbaum, who was a career attorney in the voting rights section
>> from 1997 to 2003, said that since the hiring change, candidates with
>> conservative ties have had an advantage.
>> "The clear emphasis has been to hire individuals with conservative
>> credentials," he said. "If anything, a civil rights background is
>> considered a liability."
>> But Roger Clegg, who was a deputy assistant attorney general for
>> civil rights during the Reagan administration, said that the change
>> in career hiring is appropriate to bring some "balance" to what he
>> described as an overly liberal agency.
>> "I don't think there is anything sinister about any of this. . . .
>> You are not morally required to support racial preferences just
>> because you are working for the Civil Rights Division," Clegg said.
>>
>> Many lawyers in the division, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
>> describe a clear shift in agenda accompanying the new hires. As The
>> Washington Post reported last year, division supervisors overruled
>> the recommendations of longtime career voting-rights attorneys in
>> several high-profile cases, including whether to approve a Texas
>> redistricting plan and whether to approve a Georgia law requiring
>> voters to show photographic identification.
>> In addition, many experienced civil rights lawyers have been assigned
>> to spend much of their time defending deportation orders rather than
>> pursuing discrimination claims. Justice officials defend that
>> practice, saying that attorneys throughout the department are sharing
>> the burden of a deportation case backlog.
>> As a result, staffers say, morale has plunged and experienced lawyers
>> are leaving the division. Last year, the administration offered
>> longtime civil rights attorneys a buyout. Department figures show
>> that 63 division attorneys left in 2005 nearly twice the average
>> annual number of departures since the late 1990s.
>> At a recent NAACP hearing on the state of the Civil Rights Division,
>> David Becker, who was a voting-rights section attorney for seven
>> years before accepting the buyout offer, warned that the personnel
>> changes threatened to permanently damage the nation's most important
>> civil rights watchdog.
>> "Even during other administrations that were perceived as being
>> hostile to civil rights enforcement, career staff did not leave in
>> numbers approaching this level," Becker said. "In the place of these
>> experienced litigators and investigators, this administration has,
>> all too often, hired inexperienced ideologues, virtually none of
>> which have any civil rights or voting rights experiences."
>> Dates from '57 law
>> Established in 1957 as part of the first civil rights bill since
>> Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Division enforces the nation's
>> antidiscrimination laws.
>> The 1957 law and subsequent civil rights acts directed the division
>> to file lawsuits against state and local governments, submit
>> "friend-of-the-court" briefs in other discrimination cases, and
>> review changes to election laws and redistricting to make sure they
>> will not keep minorities from voting.
>> The division is managed by a president's appointees the assistant
>> attorney general for civil rights and his deputies who are replaced
>> when a new president takes office.
>> Beneath the political appointees, most of the work is carried out by
>> a permanent staff of about 350 lawyers.
>> They take complaints, investigate problems, propose lawsuits,
>> litigate cases, and negotiate settlements.
>> Until recently, career attorneys also played an important role in
>> deciding whom to hire when vacancies opened up in their ranks.
>> "We were looking for a strong academic record, for clerkships, and
>> for evidence of an interest in civil rights enforcement," said
>> William Yeomans, who worked for the division for 24 years, leaving in
>> 2005.
>> Civil Rights Division supervisors of both parties almost always
>> accepted the career attorneys' hiring recommendations, longtime
>> staffers say. Charles Cooper, a former deputy assistant attorney
>> general for civil rights in the Reagan administration, said the
>> system of hiring through committees of career professionals worked
>> well.
>> "There was obviously oversight from the front office, but I don't
>> remember a time when an individual went through that process and was
>> not accepted," Cooper said. "I just don't think there was any
>> quarrel with the quality of individuals who were being hired. And we
>> certainly weren't placing any kind of political litmus test on . . .
>> the individuals who were ultimately determined to be best qualified."
>> But during the fall 2002 hiring cycle, the Bush administration
>> changed the rules. Longtime career attorneys say there was never an
>> official announcement. The hiring committee simply was not convened,
>> and eventually its members learned that it had been disbanded.
>> Driscoll, the former Bush administration appointee, said
>> then-Attorney General John Ashcroft changed hiring rules for the
>> entire Justice Department, not just the Civil Rights Division. But
>> career officials say that the change had a particularly strong impact
>> in the Civil Rights Division, where the potential for political
>> interference is greater than in divisions that enforce less
>> controversial laws.
>> Joe Rich, who joined the division in 1968 and who was chief of the
>> voting rights section until he left last year, said that the change
>> reduced career attorneys' input on hiring decisions to virtually
>> nothing. Once the political appointees screened resumes and decided
>> on a finalist for a job in his section, Rich said, they would invite
>> him to sit in on the applicant's final interview but they wouldn't
>> tell him who else had applied, nor did they ask his opinion about
>> whether to hire the attorney.
>> The changes extended to the hiring of summer interns.
>> Danielle Leonard, who was one of the last lawyers to be hired into
>> the voting rights section under the old system, said she volunteered
>> to look through internship applications in 2002.
>> Leonard said she went through the resumes, putting Post-It Notes on
>> them with comments, until her supervisor told her that career staff
>> would no longer be allowed to review the intern resumes. Leonard
>> removed her Post-Its from the resumes and a political aide took them
>> away.
>> Leonard said she quit a few months later, having stayed in what she
>> had thought would be her "dream job" for less than a year, because
>> she was frustrated and demoralized by the direction the division was
>> taking.
>> The academic credentials of the lawyers hired into the division also
>> underwent a shift at this time, the documents show. Attorneys hired
>> by the career hiring committees largely came from Eastern law schools
>> with elite reputations, while a greater proportion of the political
>> appointees' hires instead attended Southern and Midwestern law
>> schools with conservative reputations.
>> The average US News & World Report ranking for the law school
>> attended by successful applicants hired in 2001 and 2002 was 34,
>> while the average law school rank dropped to 44 for those hired after
>> 2003.
>> Driscoll, the former division chief-of-staff, insisted that everyone
>> he personally had hired was well qualified. And, he said, the old
>> hiring committees' prejudice in favor of highly ranked law schools
>> had unfairly blocked many qualified applicants.
>> "They would have tossed someone who was first in their class at the
>> University of Kentucky Law School, whereas we'd say, hey, he's number
>> one in his class, let's interview him," Driscoll said.
>> Learning from others
>> The Bush administration's effort to assert greater control over the
>> Civil Rights Division is the latest chapter in a long-running drama
>> between the agency and conservative presidents.
>> Nixon tried unsuccessfully to delay implementation of school
>> desegregation plans. Reagan reversed the division's position on the
>> tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools and set
>> a policy of opposing school busing and racial quotas.
>> Still, neither Nixon nor Reagan changed the division's procedures for
>> hiring career staff, meaning that career attorneys who were dedicated
>> to enforcing traditional civil rights continued to fill the ranks.
>> Yeomans said he believes the current administration learned a lesson
>> from Nixon's and Reagan's experiences: To make changes permanent, it
>> is necessary to reshape the civil rights bureaucracy.
>> "Reagan had tried to bring about big changes in civil rights
>> enforcement and to pursue a much more conservative approach, but it
>> didn't stick," Yeomans said. "That was the goal here to leave behind
>> a bureaucracy that approached civil rights the same way the political
>> appointees did."
>> SIDEBAR:
>>
>> WITH NEW FACES, NEW TYPES OF CASES
>> After the Bush administration changed hiring rules, the Civil Rights
>> Division has been bringing in more conservative lawyers. Here are
>> three recent cases worked on by some of the new hires, along with
>> information about their backgrounds:
>>
>> Case: United States v. Southern Illinois University
>> Year: 2006
>> Issue: The university offered paid fellowships for minorities and
>> women. The Civil Rights Division sued the university for
>> discriminating against white men. To avoid a court battle, the
>> university dropped the program.
>> Attorney: The case was handled by a graduate of Indiana University
>> Law School who was hired in February 2004. He is a member of the
>> Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association.
>> Previously, he worked for the Center for Individual Rights, a
>> nonprofit group that has filed many lawsuits opposing affirmative
>> action in higher education.
>>
>> Case: Georgia photo ID voting law
>> Year: 2005
>> Issue: Georgia enacted a law requiring voters to present a photo ID
>> card, charging $20 for voters who didn't already have a driver's
>> license or a passport. Five career Justice Department officials
>> reviewed the law to see whether it discriminated against blacks.
>> According to an internal memo that was later leaked, four of the five
>> recommended objecting to the law because blacks were less likely to
>> own licenses or passports, but the Civil Rights Division cleared it
>> anyway. A judge later blocked the law, comparing it to a Jim Crow-era
>> poll tax.
>> Attorney: The lone member of the review committee who favored the law
>> was hired in May 2005. He is a graduate of the University of
>> Mississippi Law School and a member of both the Federalist Society
>> and the Christian Legal Society.
>>
>> Case: Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover
>> Year: 2006
>> Issue: A Christian group sued a public library for preventing
>> religious organizations from using its facilities to hold worship
>> services. The division filed a "friend-of-the-court" brief saying
>> that the library policy violates the Christian group's civil rights.
>> Attorney: The brief was written by a Notre Dame University Law School
>> graduate who was hired in November 2004. He is a member of two groups
>> that seek to integrate Catholic faith in law and society. He also
>> clerked for then-appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., a
>> conservative whom President Bush recently elevated to the Supreme
>> Court.
>> SOURCE: Justice Department documents
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