A report issued yesterday by the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Inspector General’s Office in Justice concluded that Justice officials have engaged in hiring practices that “violated federal law and department policy, and also constituted misconduct.” More and more information has come to light in regard to the hiring policies the past several years at the Justice Department, revealing more completely the highly politicized atmosphere there that has been nursed into fruition by the Bush administration.

The LA Times published a piece that brought one of the most ridiculous incidences of this misconduct to light: homophobia.

On Monday, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog hinted at perhaps the most sensational justification yet — perceived homosexuality.

In the second of a series of reports on the politically charged tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, the department’s inspector general found that two former Justice aides used sexual orientation as a litmus test in deciding whom they would hire or fire.

The most interesting aspect of the report is not that Monica Goodling and other officials in Justice politicized the hiring process, which everyone pretty well knew about anyway. The most interesting aspects of the reports are what’s left out. To what degree did then-Attorney General Gonzales know what was happening? To what degree did the White House know what was happening? Either Gonzales knew what the hiring practices in Justice were becoming and either allowed or encouraged it, a possible crime, or he didn’t know what practices his department was using in filling important non-political vacancies (including Assistant U.S. Attorneys), which would constitute what should certainly be called criminal negligence.

Furthermore, it must be asked, given the political nature of the hiring process, whether any impact was manifest in the activities of the Department. Take, for example, the case of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. The LA Times offers a good example of one of the irregularities in Siegelman’s case:

After Siegelman became governor, a Rove protege, Bill Canary, helped lead the successful GOP effort to defeat him in 2002. Canary’s wife, Leura, is a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney in Montgomery whose office won Siegelman’s conviction.

Leura Canary started to supervise the case but recused herself after complaints from Siegelman’s lawyers.

…Republican activist, lawyer Dana Jill Simpson of Rainsville, Ala., filed a sworn statement saying that she was on a Republican campaign conference call in 2002 when she heard Bill Canary tell other campaign workers not to worry about Siegelman because Canary’s “girls” and “Karl” would make sure the Justice Department pursued the Democrat so he was not a political threat in the future.

Another interesting case is that of Georgia Thompson, who was apparently prosecuted in an effort to impact the governor’s race in Wisconsin.

Beyond political prosecutions, it needs to be determined what, if any, impact these hiring practices had on Justice Department investigations into, for example, discrimination cases. Justice has a long way to go to clean up this mess, and it may take until well after January for everything to come to light. It is my opinion that criminal prosecution is necessary, although Attorney General Mukasey seems unlikely to pursue that avenue. There are few things in government more appalling than the politicization of law enforcement, and radical change is necessary at Justice to get this sorted out. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has seemed a bit lax when it comes to self-criticism. I don’t have my hopes up.

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