Obama has spoken often of his intent to act in a bipartisan way, both in his appointments and in policies and problem solutions. One hot topic over the last couple years has been the politicization of the U.S. Justice Department, which, prior to Alberto Gonzales' appointment as Secretary of Justice, was notably free of political appointments, actively pursuing a policy of hiring new attorneys based on their abilities in the legal field, as well as on their characters, not on their political views or loyalties. The one big exception over the years is the traditional replacement of the chief U.S. attorney in each district with a member of the political party who prevailed in the presidential election.
Mukasey's rushed confirmation hearings have led to mixed results in the clean-up of the Justice Department. Mukasey promised to be non-partisan in his administration of justice and in his policies, but that has not always proven to be the case.
If Obama wants to prove his bipartisanship, I suggest that he does the following in connection with the U.S Department of Justice:
(1) Keep Patrick Fitzgerald on as U.S. Attorney in the district that includes Illinois. He has proven to be ethical, conscientious and honorable. He pursued Scooter Libby without regard to his own career as a federal prosecutor; now he is going after Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D.-Ill) for blatant corruption, extortion and solicitation of bribery. Even though it has been pretty well spread through the media that Obama and his staff have done everything possible, both during the election and since then, to avoid Gov. B and his aides, some Republicans have been trying to tar them with the same brush. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety (a requirement of the American Bar Association's ethical guidelines), it is imperative that Fitzgerald and others involved in that investigation stay on. Besides, meritorious service to the federal government and the public service should be rewarded with continued employment whenever possible.
(2) Research other Republican U.S. Attorneys currently in place to see which deserve to retain their positions, rather than doing the traditional wholesale dumping of the opposition party's people. DOJ is not supposed to be about politics, except in the matter of keeping it clean.
(3) Find a way to rehire the 8 DOJ U.S. attorneys who were fired for various reasons having nothing to do with competency or ethics because they refused to engage in unwarranted political witch hunts against Democratic officeholders or pursue spurious voter fraud claims against various organizations. Many of them strongly resisted political pressure from various individuals. At least one person lost his position because Rove wished to replace him with a loyal crony who was not gifted in the legal arena. These 8 attorneys should be rehired if there is any way to make it clear that they are being offered the same or equivalent positions because they showed ethics in office, and not as a reward for leaving Democrats alone.
It will take many years to repair the damage done to the DOJ by its politicization, as many career attorneys in that department, many of whom were not politically active, left in disgust or despair at what had been done to it.
This post has been edited by fuzzywuzzy6: 10 December 2008 - 01:06 PM
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