Some good news: Charlie Savage reports in the Boston Globe that
The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights….
Savage, of course, clearly does not regard this as good news, but I do. Consider: if filling the Civil Rights Division with conservatives is “remaking” the Division, the Division must currently be filled with liberals, no?
One could argue, and Savage does, usually by implication but sometimes explicitly, that the current career lawyers are purely “neutral,” with no political agenda at all, but I suspect that even he doesn’t believe that. For example, consider what he, and others, mean by “experience in civil rights”:
Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds — either civil rights litigators or members of civil rights groups — have plunged. Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.
Does Savage really believe that the former career lawyers whose experience was with “civil rights groups” were not committed liberals? Note his implication that the nine hires defended employers or fought against “race-conscious policies” really shouldn’t be counted as having civil rights experience. Do you think someone who had worked for the Center for Equal Opportunity or the Center for Individual Rights or the Pacific Legal Foundation would have been recognized by Savage as having worked for a “civil rights group”?
Anyone who thinks filling career jobs with people who are politically vetted is a new, and horrible, thing is a good candidate for bridge-buying in Brooklyn.
Welcome to presidential privilege, Mr. Savage. It’s one of the things we elect him to do: enact policies.
“Savage, of course, clearly does not regard this as good news, but I do. Consider: if filling the Civil Rights Division with conservatives is “remaking” the Division, the Division must currently be filled with liberals, no?”
Or it would be filled with people with experience in the field who were civil service, and not political appointees.
“Anyone who thinks filling career jobs with people who are politically vetted is a new, and horrible, thing is a good candidate for bridge-buying in Brooklyn.”
I think the argument is that its new at the civil rights division.
Where do you think the civil service careerists with experience in civil rights got that experience? How do you think they — and the people who hired them — define “civil rights? Do you really believe that the people hiring them had no ideal whether or not they supported racial preferences? Do you think they would have been as likely to hire someone who had represented employers in discrimination suits and who did not believe in preferences as someone whose experience was with a civil rights organization suing employers and who did believe in preferences?
John writes:
>>>”Anyone who thinks filling career jobs with people who are politically vetted is a new, and horrible, thing is a good candidate for bridge-buying in Brooklyn.”
Kind of like the “Michael Brown was highly qualified to run FEMA” philosophy, huh?
–Cobra
nine gained their experience […] or by fighting against race-conscious policies.
Which, of course, the Globe thinks is a contrast from “traditional civil rights,” which tells you where the Globe is coming from.
The real problem, of course, is that “civil rights groups” have abandoned “traditional civil rights.”