How Bush's team perverted the rule of law

[Swagman]

How Bush's team perverted the rule of law
Tim Rutten
August 5, 2008
A REPORT released last week by the United States Justice Department has documented the Bush Administration's unprecedented — and illegal — effort to politicise the ranks of the department's prosecutors and civil service employees with conservatives and true believers in the religious right's agenda.

Under then attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, a 30-something lawyer named Monica Goodling — a graduate of a law school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson — had virtual veto power over the appointment of US attorneys, other prosecutors and immigration judges. Goodling, as The Washington Post reported, demanded that candidates "espouse conservative priorities and Christian lifestyle choices", especially on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. The goal, according to the report, was to create a Republican "farm system" inside the Justice Department.

While Goodling was pursuing that mission, something not dissimilar was going on at the White House. According to an article by New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer in the latest New York Review of Books, "President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and a small handful of trusted advisers sought and obtained dubious legal opinions (on national security) enabling them to circumvent American laws and traditions". She details how they used these legal opinions to dramatically expand executive power.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/how-bushs-team-perverted-the-rule-of-law-20080804-3pw7.html?page=-1