There are so many different scandals out there it really is getting hard to keep track. Via TPM Muckraker, it looks like even local DC newscasts are beginning to investigate:
The I-Team has learned that since 2003...the criminal section within the Civil Rights Division has not hired a single black attorney to replace those who have left. Not one.
As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section - only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 - even though the size of the staff has more than doubled.
As Richard Ugelow, the former deputy section chief of the employment section in the Civil Rights Division puts it, "We would sue employers for having numbers like that." Ugelow, you might have guessed, is one of the dozens of career lawyers who have left the division in the past six years.
All of this, of course, is directly related to attempts by Bush officials to turn the DoJ into an arm of the Republican Party. From a previous TPM story:
Half of the 14 career lawyers hired under Schlozman [second in command of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division] were members of the conservative Federalist Society or the Republican National Lawyers Association, up from none among the eight career hires in the previous two years, according to a review of resumes. The average US News & World Report ranking of the law school attended by new career lawyers plunged from 15 to 65.
It's bad enough that they only hired Republican partisans; using partisan credentials in the hiring process is, of course, illegal. But what does it say about their people and their party that to do that they had to hire far less qualified candidates. From an average ranking of 15 to 65? Are you kidding me?
Thankfully, it looks like members of congress is beginning to pay attention to this story as well. Add another investigation to the list...
UPDATE: Video here.
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