The charge from far-right groups that Obama's nominees to the Department of Justice would "politicize" the agency are nothing short of surreal. An inspector general's report that was released only a few weeks ago determined that the civil rights division of the DoJ under Bush "improperly used political or ideological affiliations in assessing applicants for career attorney positions," and that "political or ideological affiliations resulted in other personnel actions that affected career attorneys in the Division". The Justice Department became an affirmative action program for underqualified ideologues from Christian fundamentalist schools, and who had no intention of fulfilling their mandate to uphold the law if it clashed with their political inclinations.
Oddly enough, some of the spokespeople for these groups are proving this point with their objections. According to the AP, former Bush DoJ official Patrick Trueman complained that Deputy Attorney General designate David Ogden "has been an activist in the support of a right to pornography, a right of abortion and the rights of homosexuals." Well it may shock Trueman's conscience, but in this country, we have a first amendment that means adults can look at porn, a 14th amendment that has been interpreted as granting a right to privacy and thus a right for a women to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, and which also guarantees equal protection under the law, even for gays. Trueman isn't objecting to the "politicization" of the Justice Department, he's complaining that Obama's appointees might protect rights that are ostensibly guaranteed. Which gives you a pretty accurate impression of how the DoJ was run under Bush: they enforced the laws they liked and ignored the ones they didn't.
Tony Minnery's complaint that "[t]his is left-wing politicization of the Justice Department," might be worth listening to if anything like what happened in the civil rights division under Bush happened during Holder's tenure at the DoJ, but as it stands what these far-right groups are objecting to are not the politicized hiring process of career attorneys, but the politicization of political appointees, which is as nonsensical as it sounds. That's what happens when an election is won, that's how political appointments work, for either party.
-- A. Serwer