Regent U Farm Club and the Attorney General Scandals

he's trying to throw out a red herring in the form of "diversity" in order to confuse the issue:

It is striking how much of the bad hiring can be traced to the administration's overzealous eagerness for "diversity."

Ahh.... no. It is striking how much of the bad hiring can be traced to the administration's overzealous eagerness for administration lackeys, and at best they chose a minority in order to appease liberals who might otherwise be suspicious at an underqualified hiring. Frum throws out the old Fox news form of arguing this point:

And this exercise can be repeated throughout the DoJ and indeed the whole Bush administration.

Right. A lot of the bad hires this administration has made are because of diversity, and it's so obvious a point that I don't have to provide any examples, except to say that it's widespread. Duh.

(Like the Harriet Miers thing. Does anyone really think Bush chose her because she was a woman, or because she was his closest counsel? Same story: "choosing a woman will hoodwink the Left, so I won't have anyone questioning whether she's really just a loyalty hire")

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Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce

While a theocracy has long been a dream of the most extreme religious kooks, actually putting a long term plan into action has been gathering force since the 1970's. Like any real conspiracy, it has inner strife, braggarts, turncoats etc, and while subverting traditional conservative groups is being itself subverted by Moonies, but has still succeeded alarmingly, and is and is much more of a threat than Krugman lets on (or knows?).

Sara Posner has an excellent article on another of the real farm teams that provide the reserves for the Gang Of Pirates to draw from as well as doing great damage in their own right, as does another by her here

Others have spent the effort to see not just how these people are pursuing power, but what they would like to do with it. John Sugg has written in Mother Jones

Gary North, a top Reconstruction theorist, wrote in his 1989 book, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. “Those who refuse to submit publicly…must be denied citizenship.”
..snip...
The Old Testament—with its 600 or so Mosaic laws—is the inflexible guide for the society DeMar and other Reconstructionists envision. Government posts would be reserved for the righteous, as long as they are male. There would be thousands of executions a year, with stoning a preferred method because it would turn the deaths into “community projects,” as movement theologian North has noted. Sinners in line for the death penalty would include women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses). DeMar told me that among Reconstructionists he is considered something of a liberal, because he’d execute gays only if they were caught indulging in sodomy. “I’m happy to just drive them back into the closet,” he said.
...snip...
Besides facilitating evangelism, Reconstructionists believe, government should largely be limited to building and maintaining roads, enforcing land-use contracts, and ensuring just weights and measures. Unions would not exist, and neither would unemployment benefits, Social Security, and environmental protection laws. Public schools would disappear; one of the movement’s great successes has been promoting homeschooling programs and publishing texts used by tens of thousands of homeschooling families.
...snip...
The old left—the Communist Party and its many splinters—used organizing tactics called popular fronts, in which people were recruited through specific causes into a movement tacitly guided by the Party. Reconstruction has married those Leninist tactics to the causes of the right—abortion, evolution, gay marriage, school prayer. Gary North wrote in 1982, in an effort to reach Baptists,“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty…until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Nowhere at the Restore America rally did anyone hoist a banner for Reconstruction; those attending came to develop a united front supporting such things as displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. But they were also introduced—and recruited—to the broader program.
...snip...
“All governments are theocracies,” he (ex-judge Roy Moore) said. “We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head.”

(as if things like roads, or hospitals, even sports, are atheist inspired if not specifically Christian)

Katherine Yurica also weighs in with a detailed report that includes this list:

1. God’s People Are to be Regents Over the Earth: “Almighty God wants us to recapture the dominion man held in the beginning… Remember, at the time of creation man exercised authority, under God’s sovereignty, over everything. He was God’s surrogate, His steward or regent.
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2. Dominion over Others Originates in the Bible: “The genesis account uses two colorful words to describe this. One… we translate ‘dominion. The word means to ‘rule over’ or ‘tread down,’ as with grapes…
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3. Man Was Told to Subdue or ‘Trample the Earth’: “The other word…is translated ‘subdue.’ Man was told to subdue the earth. The root means ‘to trample under foot,’ as one would do when washing dirty clothes. Therefore… we have in part the concept of separating good from evil by force.
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4. God Gave Man the Power to Govern and the Right to Subdue: “With the first word …God gives man the authority to govern all that is willing to be governed. With the second…He grants man authority over the untamed and the rebellious. In both instances, God gave man a sweeping and total mandate of dominion over this planet and everything in it.
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5. God Intended the World to be Governed and Subdued by the Godly: “….God’s intention was that His world be governed and subdued by those who themselves were governed by God.
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6. God Demands His People to Invest Their Capital: “Despite our preconceived attitudes toward social justice, God’s Law of Use controls the ultimate distribution of wealth. We must be willing to take the world as He made it and live in it to the fullest…

Very Scary folk

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The Self Made Man is just not admitting where he got all the parts.

Now is there a problem with Messiah Graduates entering public service? Of course not. But there is a problem when political appointments MUST qualify on the basis of ideology because of a religous or political agenda they are pursuing that does NOT serve the people and violates the separation of church and state.

It is not that we don’t want our leaders to be guided by morals or religon that is a danger, but that we do not want ever to have a government run church, which requires fealty to a specific religon. This is why 150 appointments of evangelicals from Regent U is cause for concern.

It seems there has been a concerted effort by a small few in government to turn justice appointments into a club that colors itself as government run church, protecting the “inner flock” and prosecuting “heretics”.

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It is the economy, stupid.

Yehaw!

The Keys To the Church

The keys to the church in the whitehouse, in the person of Monica Goodling.

The Vote on the Judiciary Committe to authorize immunity, 32-6!

Now maybe we can find out what is really going on at the WhiteHouse and its broad network of Christian Fundamentalist Operatives over 400 who have access to the Justice Dept.

Clear signs the country is moving in the right direction!

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It is the economy, stupid.

to include more and more, is it fair to ask if this administration is supporting a sort of secret coup d'et tat.

This is what has been going on behind closed doors.

Insider Politics at the DoJ

Complaints about the program emerged again this month after Senate and House investigators received a letter from the unidentified Justice employees, who alleged that hiring at the department was "consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics." The letter singled out the honors and intern programs, alleging that senior political appointees appeared to reject applicants who "had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a 'liberal' cause, or otherwise appeared to have 'liberal' leanings."

Most disturbing is the political gerry-mandering at the Justice Department which should by law by free from partisanship for the sake of serving justice and the law.

But this hostile takeover by "Bushies" doesn't just stop at Justice.

There are numerous other revered institutions dirtied by this Nixonian pollution.

I believe this is why Alberton Gonzales can not resign.

The Bushies Special Appointees have their fingers stuck in every piece of "honest Abe Cherry Pie that is government, from the CDC, to NASA to the FCC, to Faith Based Initiatives. And all these rookies are coming up looking awfully red and awfully much like partisan political hacks.

Thank God people are getting sick of it and speaking up!

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It is the economy, stupid.

from the ffirings

Two former U.S. attorneys said today they believe ongoing investigations into the dismissals last year of eight federal prosecutors could result in criminal charges against senior Justice Department officials.

The strongest case is likely related to David Iglesias, and Carol Lam.

A bit of interested trivia, the part played by Tom Cruise, was inspired by David Iglesias, in the movie 'A Few Good Men'. The most notable line of the movie was near the end, the forceful declaration, "You can't handle the truth".

Iglesias said the silver lining of the prosecutor firings is that they have triggered a public and congressional recognition of the need to reassert the Justice Department's independence.

There has been conjecture that much effort was put into guaranteeing Republican victories in the '06 election under the guise of 'voter fraud' investigations. The democrats gained back the majoriiy in that election, in spite of the many questionable goings on in the Justice Department. There is speculation that there would have been a much larger democratic majority without these questionable practices.

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It is the economy, stupid.

Continuing my solo expose on the DoJ.

Justice is Sacred, unless you are Alberto Gonzales

Appalling Alberto J. Gonzales

This is disturbing.

Dan Metcalfe says he thought he had seen it all as a former senior Justice Department lawyer whose career stretches back to the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration. [.....] "As a long-term Justice Department official, I am embarrassed and increasingly incensed that he is still in there," he said.

The Justice Department, Metcalfe said, has been heavily damaged by "sheer political expediency, avoidance of individual responsibility, defensive personal aggrandizement, irresponsible 'consensus' decision-making (and) disregard for long-standing practices and principles."

He criticized the Bush administration for filling positions that are traditionally held by career employees with political appointees and protégés.

To anyone following this, watching the oversight hearings on CSpan, and in general keeping track of what has been going on in the Justice Department, there is no other word for it but, appalling.

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It is the economy, stupid.

I know this 'scandal' just isn't sexy anymore what with the burning fields of California, the massive off budget requests for planes to accomodate buster bunkers for Iran.

But really this Attorney General Scandal is still with us, because many of the appointees are still in place.

If you watced any of the hearings for the new AG McClusky, then you will hear of the damage, as the eyes of the Senators tell the story of a collapse of integrity for the once Great Justice Department in the world, the US Department of Justice.

If we are a country of laws and not men.

or How Alberto & the Gang Turned the Justice Department into a Political Arm of the RNC

Every time we take a look at the United States attorney scandal, more evidence emerges that Alberto Gonzales politicized the Justice Department to the point where it sometimes seems like a branch of the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Thornburgh said prosecutors are using “unprecedented” legal theories to turn mostly “nickel and dime transgressions” into major federal felonies.

So no, I am not the only one that saw this coming.

What a pitiful state of affairs that our legal system has been so pornographied by the Bush GOP.

It's almost as offensive that this story goes by unnoticed, because it seems there are so many 'worse' things going on.

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It is the economy, stupid.