"My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right[] out of the section.": You can read that quote and a lot more in the DOJ Inspector General's report, "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring and Other Improper Personnel Actions in the Civil Rights Division." Another taste:

Schlozman made statements boasting to others about using political and ideological affiliations in hiring for career Civil Rights attorney positions. One example is an e-mail dated January 6, 2004, from Schlozman to an attorney hired by Schlozman in the Division. Shortly after being hired, the attorney sent an e-mail to Schlozman expressing his happiness in the Special Litigation Section, noting that his "office is even next to a Federalist Society member." Schlozman replied by e-mail, "Just between you and me, we hired another member of 'the team' yesterday. And still another ideological comrade will be starting in one month. So we are making progress."

  I don't know if hiring a career attorney based on ideological considerations is actually illegal, if the employer believes that a particular ideology will better serve the government's interests than others. (The report suggests that ideology is a proxy for partisan affiliation, which is an illegal consideration, but this strikes me as highly implausible.) But legal issues aside, this was a terribly embarrassing and shameful period for DOJ, as I have written before. Looking forward, it will be interesting to see how the Obama Administration will respond. In particular, it will be interesting to see how many Republicans (if any) will be hired by the Civil Rights Division during Obama's tenure. Will the new Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division "plan to gerrymander all of those crazy cons" left over from the Bush years? Stay tuned.

  UPDATE: Table 2 of the report is particularly striking, as it lists the ideological orientation of the hires by Bradley Schlozman from 2003 -2006 based on their resumes. Of those who had an identifiable ideology, 63 were conservative and 2 were liberal. (Another 34 had no identifiable ideology from the resumes.) Wow, that's incredible. In the Clinton years, typical DOJ Civil Rights hiring would have been almost exactly the other way around.

More on the DOJ Civil Rights Division Hiring Report: I blogged below about the DOJ Inspector General report on hiring in the Civil Rights Division, and I wanted to point out that the report is really pretty amusing (in a frightening sort of way) for the details it offers about the hiring process. In particular, Bradley Schlozman seems to have never thought about the possibility that his e-mails would some day be made public, so he left a lot of gems for us to ponder.

  Here's my favorite so far. At one point, a DOJ section chief had contacted the judge that an applicant had clerked for, and one judge apparently offered a negative review of the applicant. Noting that the judge was a Bush-43 appointed judge, Shlozman discounted the criticism in an e-mail to the DOJ section chief on the following basis:

Okay, but just remember, Republican judges are generally far more demanding of quality, accuracy, and faithful adherence to statute and constitutional text than liberals, for whom activism and advocacy are the hallmarks of acceptability.

Yeesh.