Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Oh, perfect.

When the Bush appointees say "Justice" they mean "just us."

There is an attorney, Leslie Hagen, who worked for the Justice Department until late 2006, when she was told her contract would not be renewed. It's curious, really, because this woman
received the highest possible ratings for her work as liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys' committee on Native American issues. Her final job evaluation lists five categories for supervisors to rank her performance. For each category, a neat X fills the box marked, "Outstanding." And at the bottom of the page, under "overall rating level," she also got the top mark: Outstanding.


And funny thing--before that happened...
Justice Department e-mails obtained by NPR show that [former Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales's senior counsel Monica Goodling had a particular interest in Hagen's duties. A few months before Hagen was let go, according to one e-mail, Goodling removed part of Hagen's job portfolio — the part dealing with child exploitation and abuse.


Former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Tom Heffelfinger, who recruited her to Washington, said
it's "a real loss to the Department of Justice and to the people the department serves when somebody like [Hagen] is removed from a position, especially for no reason."


So you have to ask yourself--if you're not already way ahead of me--why Ms. Goodling got all bent out of shape over Ms. Hagen dealing with child abuse. Indeed, further, what was the reason such an apparently exceptional lawyer was removed from her position?

Well, it's a matter of incontrovertible fact and public record that this Justice Department was improperly partisan in its hiring and firing decisions. But-
by all accounts, Hagen was a GOP loyalist.


So again, why?

The Justice Department's inspector general is looking into whether Hagen was dismissed after a rumor reached Goodling that Hagen is a lesbian.

As one Republican source put it, "To some people, that's even worse than being a Democrat."


As we all know, dykes are just powder kegs of child abuse waiting to go off.

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