The Damage Done
One of the Obama transition team’s pressing tasks is to return the Justice Department to its former role, prior to 2000, as the Cabinet-level department within the executive branch that upholds and enforces federal law. But it’s a bit like trying to clean up a house that’s been trashed by the previous owner:
As a transition team for the Obama administration begins work on a Justice Department overhaul, the key question is where to begin.
Political considerations affected every crevice of the department during the Bush years, from the summer intern hiring program to the dispensing of legal advice about detainee interrogations, according to reports by the inspector general and testimony from bipartisan former DOJ officials at congressional hearings.
[...]
“The infusion of politics into the Justice Department and an abdication of responsibility by its leaders have dealt a severe blow,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the panel’s ranking Republican, wrote in an opinion piece last month. “Great damage has been done to the credibility and effectiveness of the Justice Department.”Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, said that the preelection brainstorming sessions of Democrats who want to fix the Justice Department sound like “an escalating composition of woes,” not unlike the health-related talk at his mother’s mah-jongg games. “Oh, my knee; no, my back; no . . . ” he moaned over audience laughter at a recent luncheon held by the American Constitution Society.
Via Memeorandum.
Tags: Bush administration, Department of Justice
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