The Gist

Purging for Purity

OK, so we talked a little bit about this issue late on the show yesterday, but it's just so ridiculous, wrong and blatantly illegal--even for the Bush Administration. An investigation has revealed that high ranking Bush administration appointees at the Justice Department used political litmus tests on low level job applicants, including interns!

Traditionally, the highly coveted intern and honors jobs had been awarded based on merit. But in 2002, top Justice Department officials moved to give political appointees more control, prompting complaints from the career ranks. The problem flared up again in 2006, when hundreds of applications were rejected for questionable reasons, according to the report.

Candidates for the Honors Program that year whose résumés indicated liberal affiliations were weeded out at three times the rate of conservative-leaning applicants, investigators said.

Applications which expressed sympathy for left leaning groups or mentioned working for organizations like Planned Parenthood were deemed "unacceptable" and denied. The internships (of course) then went to less qualified Republican applicants. Isn't political discrimination like this illegal? Just asking. We already know that the under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales U.S. Attorneys were fired for political reasons, but the ideologically based hiring at Justice went so far that applicants with "liberal appearances" were screened out.