John missed the Washington Post's revelation of the Department of Justice hiring "scandal" in his round-up yesterday. George Mason University Law School Professor Todd Zywicki helpfully elaborates on it at the Volokh Conspiracy:

Oh my goodness--a bust of James Madison in [the first attorney's] very office! Gracious, a civil rights lawyer who clerked for Charles Pickering--who "congressional Democrats...contended" was hostile to civil rights (apparently since some congressional Democrats "contended it," all of his clerks are disqualified from working in the office).

The other example cited in the article seems odd as well--why is it supposed to be a problem that a graduate of Regent Law School might be interested in working on "some religious liberties" cases. Would we be similarly shocked if a minority graduate of Southern Law School, for example, expressed a particular interest in working on Voting Rights cases, or a former intern at a pro-choice organization was interested in reproductive rights cases?

Todd has more on the "nonideological" bona fides of the career lawyers who offered them as examples and comments:

But if these are the "smoking gun" examples that are the best ones that career attorneys can offer as conservative ideology run amuck at the DOJ, then it seems to me that this says more about the real biases of the supposedly "nonpolitical" attitudes of DOJs career attorneys and the ideological parochialism of the Washington Post than about some sort of hiring "scandal" at DOJ....

John, how did you miss this one?

JOHN adds: What this really shows is the pathetically small extent to which conservatives have been able to make inroads into the federal bureaucracy during six years of what what purports to be--and is, in some respects--a conservative administration.

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