A number of conservative figures have tried, since the Obama administration took office, to make the case that the Obama Justice Department is as politicized as the Bush Justice Department was. One of the point men on this issue has been Hans von Spakovsky, whom McClatchy newspapers dubbed a "vote suppression guru" for his accumulated experience in finding creative ways to depress minority turnout to the advantage of GOP candidates. Naturally, Spakovsky has been lobbing shots from his perch at National Review, a publication that offered its spin services to the White House at the height of the U.S. attorney scandal.
The revelations about Karl Rove's direct and crucial role into the firing of David Iglesias should help put things back in perspective. Namely, Rove, concerned that Iglesias had refused to pursue trumped up voter-fraud charges in order to boost Republican candidates' fortunes, pushed for Iglesias to be fired. Up till now, Rove had vehemently denied being involved in the U.S. attorney firings.
But it's not as though the damage to the Justice Department stops there. During the Bush era, career attorneys were hired and fired based on their political sympathies; the Office of Legal Counsel went from being the first line of defense against executive overreach to a rubber stamp for everything from torture to deploying the military on American soil; the voting rights section, riddled with Republican partisans with questionable racial views, stopped defending voting rights and started suppressing them; and in the public integrity section, professional standards were tossed aside, thus compromising important cases.
This was the state of the Justice Department at the beginning of Eric Holder's tenure. For eight years, this was the state of the agency that is tasked with upholding the laws of the United States. I realize it's easy to criticize the Bush administration, but what we're talking about here is nothing less than political operatives in the White House attempting to control and manipulate how the law is enforced nationwide, not just in this circumstance but as standard operating procedure. This isn't a "policy difference," and it should not be trivialized as such merely because there's a Beltway code mandating that administrations overlook their predecessor's wrongdoing.
-- A. Serwer
