The Sullying of Justice

Yet another report notes the obvious — the Bush Justice Department was heavily, and illegally, politicized. And still remaining are the great unanswered questions.

Was this more than just the work of zealot underlings? What role did the White House play in creating a culture that allowed top Justice aides to discriminate in hiring on the basis of politics and ideology?

On the matter of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the former White House counsel who became a clueless cabinet member, the latest Justice report is clear. He was unaware of the hiring process, much of which occurred before he came aboard.

Unaware is still a fitting description of his short tenure as the nation's top lawyer, as his congressional testimony demonstrated.

But it seems implausible that his counselor and Justice's liaison to the White House, Monica Goodling, was acting of her own accord in this matter. Possible, certainly. Plausible? We wouldn't give you anywhere near even money on it.

The joint investigation by the department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Goodling and Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, broke the law by allowing politics to guide the hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and career government lawyers in a department that was supposed to be apolitical in most of its hiring.

"What is it about George W.

Bush that makes you want to serve him?" Goodling reportedly asked some candidates. If hired, they were, of course, supposed to be serving the cause of justice, not a cult of personality.

The Justice Department, despite assurances from its current head, Michael Mukasey, that all is fixed now, will have to work hard to regain the public's trust. Mukasey should consider whether criminal charges should be forthcoming.

Congress must continue to dig on this issue and on the firing of U.S. attorneys, whether the prosecution of Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson was political and whether former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was selectively targeted and prosecuted.

It's a long laundry list. But the public deserves to know if it's a list written on White House stationery.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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