Kansas City News Blog

By C.J. JANOVY

The spectacular resignation last fall of former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales overshadowed the odiousness of his predecessor, John Ashcroft. According to some revisionist theories, Gonzales actually made Ashcroft look good – as if Ashcroft hadn’t been the one to initiate the Bush administration’s decimation of the Constitution.

Yesterday, the Justice Department released an internal investigation revealing that – surprise! – attorneys applying for jobs there had been “deselected” based on their political affiliations. In other words, starting in 2002, under Ashcroft, the Justice Department broke the law.

To quote the report’s conclusions:

“Under the system implemented by the Attorney General’s Working Group beginning in 2002, a Screening Committee composed primarily of politically appointed employees from the Department’s leadership offices had to approve all Honors Program and SLIP candidates for interviews.” (The Honors Program is a highly competitive hiring program for entry-level attorneys, and the SLIP is a competitive paid summer internship program in the Department.)

“The data showed that candidates with Democratic Party and liberal affiliations apparent on their applications were deselected at a significantly higher rate than candidates with Republican Party, conservative, or neutral affiliations. This pattern continued to exist when we compared a subset of academically highly qualified candidates from the three groups.… While we were unable to prove that any specific members intentionally made deselections based on these prohibited factors, the data indicated that the Committee considered political or ideological affiliations when deselecting candidates.”

In other words, your chances of getting a job were significantly lower if you were a member of any of the following organizations:

American Civil Liberties Union
American Constitution Society
Amnesty International
Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian Advocates
Bisexual Law Student Association
Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition
Center for Constitutional Rights
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Coast Alliance
Committee of Refugees from El Salvador
Conservation International
Conservation Law Foundation
Earthjustice
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Resources Trust
Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, Inc.
Georgetown University Institute for Public Representation
Georgia Project Center for Democratic Renewal
Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network
Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Watch
Innocence Project
International Human Rights Law Group
Law Students Against the Death Penalty
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Alliance
Mexican American Legal Defense
Midwest Environmental Advocates
NAACP Legal Defense
National Wildlife Federation
Natural Resources Defense Council
Nature Conservancy
New York University Brennan Center for Justice
Northwest Environmental Defense Center
NOW Legal Defense
Partnership for Civil Justice
Physicians for Human Rights
Planned Parenthood
Pridelaw
Public Citizen
San Diego Baykeeper
Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy
Save Our Wetlands, Inc.
Sierra Club
Texas Immigrant and Refugee Coalition

All of this news from yesterday failed to sufficiently celebrate the fact that John Ashcroft, who served as U.S. Attorney General from 2001-2005, is the former governor of Missouri, Senator from Missouri, and graduate of Springfield, Missouri, public schools.