By The River

A report is out this morning from the Justice Department Office of Inspector General today with the ominous title, "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of Attorney General."

Here is the full Monica Goodling report.

Goodling, the York Haven, Pa., native, ethically-challenged Messiah College graduate, former West Shore Country Club lifeguard, and, most importantly, George W. Bush devotee, is accused of weeding out Democrats and lesbians from people hired as attorneys in the Justice Department. If true, that's against the law. Political hiring is legal for only a tiny fraction of the Justice Department's 110,000 employees. Hiring of everyone but a few top-ranking people is subject to Civil Service restrictions, which bar basing hiring decisions on politics or even asking about them. Always been illegal (in the modern era), always will be illegal.

The report concludes that she and several colleagues broke the law and violated department policy in their actions. The question is whether she can be prosecuted--she was granted limited immunity for her testimony before Congress where she talked about a lot of this stuff. And the report says nothing about the people above Goodling in the food chain and how they may have been involved in the illegal actions. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, her boss, claims he just didn't know what she was doing.

Perhaps he didn't, although if you believe that, you probably also believe that low-ranking Army enlisted personnel decided on their own that torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was okay. It's time for some high-level accountability in the Bush Administration.