DOJ Bureacrats yelling for help....

From American Progress:

ADMINISTRATION -- POLITICIZATION CONTINUES IN NON-POLITICAL RANKS OF DOJ:

A "Group of Concerned Justice Department Employees" have sent an anonymous letter to both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees revealing that "the non-political ranks of Justice employees...are consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics."

As Politico explained, "Under normal circumstances, the various divisions at Justice review applications from potential hires, set interviews and send the list to the Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management, which gives the green light to proceed." The letter detailed, however, that the recruitment office is "no longer the final step...because the list had to go higher" -- to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The letter continues that "when the list of potential interviewees was returned, it had been cut dramatically...many sections were left with fewer potential interviews than vacant slots to fill."

In a Dec. 5, 2006, meeting scheduled in response to the complaints, McNulty's chief of staff was "offensive to the point of [being] insulting" and claimed that his "screening panel" had struck people from the list because of "grades, spelling errors on applications, and inappropriate information about them on the Internet."

Justice Department staff, however, found that among those individuals rejected by McNulty's office, "one common denominator appeared repeatedly" -- they had "interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a 'liberal' cause, or otherwise appeared to have 'liberal' leanings."

The letter concluded that "while the current political appointees repeatedly remind everyone that the U.S. Attorneys 'serve at the pleasure of the President,' the Department's career attorneys serve the people of the United States" and urged Congress to "include this politicizing of the career ranks in your questioning of Attorney Gonzales and his staff."

The Justice Department has refused to comment on the letter.

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