Enforce The Laws? Sorry, Not My Job

Ladies and gentlemen, the Rt. Hon. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

I am well aware that some people have called on me and on the Department to take even more drastic steps than those I have described. For example, some commentators have suggested that we should criminally prosecute the people found in the reports to have committed misconduct. Where there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, we vigorously investigate it. And where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute. But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.

That does not mean, as some people have suggested, that those officials who were found by the joint reports to have committed misconduct have suffered no consequences. Far from it. The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity. Their misconduct has now been laid bare by the Justice Department for all to see. As a general matter in such cases, where disciplinary referrals are appropriate, they are made. To put it in concrete terms, I doubt that anyone in this room would want to trade places with any of those people.

They've been completely humiliated, you see! Never mind the right-wing welfare system hiring them as corporate lawyers or such. They might end up being slightly uncomfortable when food shopping! Isn't that enough? What are you people, sadists?

Of course, since Mukasey entered the DoJ as a wise and independent voice (or so I was told by the high Broderists and serious Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer) I'm sure this latest decision to throw the rule of law in the toilet reflects a very considered and superior judgment. In no way can it construed as water-carrying for the Bush Administration. Perish the thought.

...Mukasey offers this on the subject of what to do with all those career attorneys who were hired illegally:

Other critics have suggested that we should summarily fire or reassign all those people who were hired through the flawed processes described in the joint reports. But there is a principle of equity that we all learned in the schoolyard, and that remains as true today as when we first heard it: two wrongs do not make a right. As the Inspector General himself recently told the Senate Judiciary Committee, the people hired in an improper way did not, themselves, do anything wrong. It therefore would be unfair - and quite possibly illegal given their civil service protections - to fire them or to reassign them without individual cause.

It is illegal under civil service protections, but this third-grade logic doesn't mean that the law ought not to be altered for this special case. Otherwise there will be literally no accountability for these illegal activities that continue to have ramifications. The Hatch Act may offer no real punishment outside of expelling offenders from their governmental positions, but surely it follows that if the prepetrators are already out of government, the fruits of their actions must then go through a legal process to remain employed.

Ultimately, this needs to happen. We need a massive landmine search and destroy mission in the Justice Department.

"Not every violation of the law is a crime." If that's not an epitaph for this Administration.