No sense of right and wrong - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Honus · #1 07-29-2008, 12:42 AM

I wonder whether Monica Goodling understands why her actions at DOJ were illegal and immoral. Somehow I doubt that her Regent University legal education equipped her to make that determination:

Quote:

Goodling Screened DOJ Career Candidates For Affiliations With ‘Abortion, Homosexuality, Iraq and WMD’»
According today’s report by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), former Justice Department lawyer, Monica Goodling conducted detailed “Internet research on candidates for Department positions…designed to obtain their political and ideological affiliations.”

Apparently drawing on her experience conducting opposition research for the RNC, Goodling used a complex LexisNexis search string to screen candidates for affiliations or statements related to conservative flash points. The search string included such affiliations as homosexuality, abortion, and the 2000 Florida recount. This is the search that Goodling entered into the LexisNexis database to research job candidates:

[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

The OPR found that Goodling obtained this search string from a colleague who used it to screen political appointees. Goodling, however, used it in violation of federal law to screen candidates for career department positions. In addition, Goodling “instructed” a temporary assistant to “use the search string for all candidates she was asked to screen.”

According to the report, Goodling also used “www.tray.com and other web sites to get information about political contributions made by candidates.” She explained in her testimony to Congress, “Normally, if I found something that was negative about someone, we didn’t hire them.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/28/goodling-googler/

Goodling and her boss, Alberto Gonzales, got in trouble for the same reason - neither knows the difference between right and wrong.

Honus · #2 07-29-2008, 05:35 PM

How about that. No interest in the administration's subversion of the Department of Justice. Don't feel bad, the press corps doesn't care, either:

Quote:

White House press corps hasn’t asked Perino about DOJ politicization.»

Desipite yesterday’s explosive report confirming that top Justice Department officials, including Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson, had violated federal law, the White House press corps has not asked White House press secretary Dana Perino a single question about it. Both yesterday’s and today’s press briefings included no discussion of the report, nor a question on whether Attorney General Mukasey would follow through on a criminal perjury referral from Congress.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/29/white-house-press-corps-hasnt-asked-perino-about-doj-politicization/

bob_98sr5 · #3 07-29-2008, 06:21 PM

dculkin,

its obviously wrong, but do you think any political appointees appointed by any democratic politician is anything different? theyre appointees for a reason: they tow the line that the politician is towing himself, DOJ, judges, etc, etc.

sucks, but it is what it is. to me, this is truly a non-story.

bob

tankdriver · #4 07-29-2008, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bob_98sr5

do you think any political appointees appointed by any democratic politician is anything different?

Let's see evidence it's nothing different. Even if everybody does something wrong, that doesn't mean it's not wrong anymore.

bob_98sr5 · #5 07-29-2008, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tankdriver

Let's see evidence it's nothing different. Even if everybody does something wrong, that doesn't mean it's not wrong anymore.

again, read my entire statement:

its obviously wrong, but do you think any political appointees appointed by any democratic politician is anything different? theyre appointees for a reason: they tow the line that the politician is towing himself, DOJ, judges, etc, etc.

so let me clarify for you:

1. its obviously wrong (what the republicans did). tandriver: do not confuse me with some crazy right wing neocon. i am not above criticizing republicans, nor democrats, though i find that most democrats like to read the first two or three lines of an article and stop right there. i do however, take issue with any factually incorrect, political nonsense and provide my best to refute it.

2. democrats do it too; there's no difference. case in point: in 1993, President Clinton fired all 93 of the US district attorneys upon entering the White House. Those DAs were replaced by like minded DA appointees. please search this for yourself. and to pre-empt your counter argument, yes, this is not a Clinton thing. Most if not all presidents take a hatchet to all appointed offices and fill them with like minded individuals. and to reiterate my last line "it is what it is".

3. the process to pick political appointees is rife with less-than equitable decision making because the goal is to appear impartial, especially when it comes to areas where the public feels that impartiality is paramount to politics. hence the great debate over the "last" supreme court justice seat.

clear?

thank you,
bob

Honus · #6 07-29-2008, 10:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bob_98sr5

...2. democrats do it too; there's no difference. case in point: in 1993, President Clinton fired all 93 of the US district attorneys upon entering the White House. Those DAs were replaced by like minded DA appointees. please search this for yourself...

Different situation. Those were US Attorneys, who are political appointees. Incoming administrations always replace the US Attorneys with people whose philosophies mesh with the new President's. George Bush did the same thing. What Bill Clinton did wrong was fire them all at once without providing for an orderly transistion. His screw up was a management malfunction, not official corruption of the sort perpetrated by Goodling and her cohorts.

I don't agree that they all do it. Goodling and Gonzales are corrupt. I don't think that is generally true of people in Washington.

tankdriver · #7 07-30-2008, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bob_98sr5

again, read my entire statement:

its obviously wrong, but do you think any political appointees appointed by any democratic politician is anything different? theyre appointees for a reason: they tow the line that the politician is towing himself, DOJ, judges, etc, etc.

so let me clarify for you:

1. its obviously wrong (what the republicans did). tandriver: do not confuse me with some crazy right wing neocon. i am not above criticizing republicans, nor democrats, though i find that most democrats like to read the first two or three lines of an article and stop right there. i do however, take issue with any factually incorrect, political nonsense and provide my best to refute it.

2. democrats do it too; there's no difference. case in point: in 1993, President Clinton fired all 93 of the US district attorneys upon entering the White House. Those DAs were replaced by like minded DA appointees. please search this for yourself. and to pre-empt your counter argument, yes, this is not a Clinton thing. Most if not all presidents take a hatchet to all appointed offices and fill them with like minded individuals. and to reiterate my last line "it is what it is".

3. the process to pick political appointees is rife with less-than equitable decision making because the goal is to appear impartial, especially when it comes to areas where the public feels that impartiality is paramount to politics. hence the great debate over the "last" supreme court justice seat.

clear?

thank you,
bob

I read your entire statement. Since we agreed it was obviously wrong, I didn't quote that part. The people were not appointees.

EDIT: Dculkin beat me to it.

LUVMBDiesels · #8 07-29-2008, 07:32 PM

For normal non-political Fed jobs (GS)...
We have to go through background checks and invetviews with the US Marshall or FBI or Secret Service In fact the ONLY political party you are NOT allowed to be a part of is the American Fascist Party -- Commies are Ok

Political appointees are a different story. It is not clear if she was doing this for GS jobs or political appointees...

If this was for GS positions what she did was illegal.

Honus · #9 07-29-2008, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LUVMBDiesels

...It is not clear if she was doing this for GS jobs or political appointees...

I believe that is clear. Here is the Inspector General's report: http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/goodling072408.pdf

What she did was thoroughly illegal.

bob_98sr5 · #10 07-29-2008, 09:13 PM

good link, d. if she did break the law, she should be prosecuted, plain and simple.

kerry · #11 07-29-2008, 09:49 PM

I wasn't too surprised when I googled her when the story first came out and learned that she had graduated law school from Regent University (Pat Robertson's Law School). I don't think she doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. I think she just has a different idea of right and wrong than the average non-Regent student. Her undergraduate degree was from Messiah College, a conservative evangelical school. I'm supposing that her version of right and wrong is closely associated with God's commands and putting believers in positions of legal power was one of her goals.
I wonder what Pat Roberston and the faculty of the law school at Regent University are saying about what she did.

Honus · #12 07-29-2008, 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry

...I don't think she doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. I think she just has a different idea of right and wrong than the average non-Regent student. Her undergraduate degree was from Messiah College, a conservative evangelical school. I'm supposing that her version of right and wrong is closely associated with God's commands and putting believers in positions of legal power was one of her goals...

If so, then she is arrogant in addition to being unethical.

Quote:

I wonder what Pat Roberston and the faculty of the law school at Regent University are saying about what she did.

Part of me would love to be a fly on the wall. The rest of me thinks that it would be revolting to hear their BS.

kerry · #13 07-29-2008, 11:02 PM

I just went to CBN news (Robertson's news network). I couldn't find anything on the site about the story.

davidmash · #14 07-30-2008, 12:56 AM

CBN and news makes about as much sens to me as Central Intelligence. Just my opinion.

link · #15 08-01-2008, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry

I wasn't too surprised when I googled her when the story first came out and learned that she had graduated law school from Regent University (Pat Robertson's Law School). I don't think she doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. I think she just has a different idea of right and wrong than the average non-Regent student. Her undergraduate degree was from Messiah College, a conservative evangelical school. I'm supposing that her version of right and wrong is closely associated with God's commands and putting believers in positions of legal power was one of her goals.
I wonder what Pat Roberston and the faculty of the law school at Regent University are saying about what she did.

They'd probably say she is a good foot soldier pursuing the ends of her supervisors, and the lord. I don’t remember if it was Bush or Rove who spoke of a “permanent Republican majority,” but that statement was clearly marching orders.

According to one of the articles I read, the worst par of her actions was that several people were placed in career jobs expressly because of their support of the party. Accordingly, the laws protecting the employment of these people will make it all but impossible to remove them from office.

I hope she ultimately looses her license to practice law and spends some quality time in a Federal prison. Maybe she’ll be hired as a professor at her old law school. Disgusting sycophant.