As many of you know, conservatives hate government because it interferes with their precious free market 'GOD', so when they actually control the government they hire unqualified sycophants, who by their very nature undermine the posts they are given because of their incompetence and hatred for the government they draw a paycheck from. They then will use their position like an ideological club as much as possible. This comes in very handy when the administration changes hands, because then they can work to get rid of everything Democratic.

Monica Goodling was a powerful symbol of of the Bush administration. She was given a very powerful position with none of the basic qualifications for the job, just like Heckvuajob Brownie. In her case, she graduated from Pat Robertson's Regent University, and because she's a right-wing conservative hack, she got hired to assist Alberto Gonzalez at the DOJ with the power to hire and fire people. How is that possible, you say?

About a week ago, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted a tidbit that the rest of us missed: TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University boasts that 150 of its graduates, including former top DoJ aide Monica Goodling, are serving in some capacity in the Bush administration. Lithwick noted that this is “a huge number for a 29-year-old school.” That’s certainly true; it’s also a huge number for a small right-wing college led by a radical televangelist who believes Americans brought 9/11 upon themselves.

George W. Bush is the answer. If you forgot who Monica is, here's how she abused the power she was given. And of course she acted like a typical Grover Norquist clone and instructed the DOJ's attorneys to delete and destroy documents.

Turley and Olbermann discussed Alberto and Monica here. (Click to see video)

If McCain had won the election, he would have continued hiring incompetents throughout his administration because having a jackass fail in a key job only helps push the conservative meme that the government is useless and should not be involved in the actual job of governing. I was wondering if David Axelrod and his crew have made a real effort to purge these Heritage/Robertson imbeciles from their ranks?

Here's an example of what conservative governance is all about and what can happen if you don't clean house.

Hullabaloo writes about Bush-era embeds.

During the US Attorney scandal many of us wondered if it would result in a bunch of GOP operatives remaining burrowed in the Justice Department because the Democrats would fear being criticized for "politicizing" the department if they tried to fire them. Republicans, having fully mastered "I know you are but what am I" politics can always be counted upon to cry victim even when the turned tables are of a completely different type and the hapless Democrats end up chasing their tails because they can't figure out how to parry it. It was predictable that, perversely, there would be quite a few wingnut holdovers after the scandal completely safe in their jobs.

It turns out there are burrowers and one of them has left the department and immediately gone to the press to spill breathless tales of racism in the Obama/Holder DOJ -- toward white people, naturally:

Adams' allegations spread across the right-wing media. After Adams penned a Washington Times column leveling accusations of a "corrupt" dismissal of the New Black Panthers case and appeared in an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Adams' unsubstantiated story spread throughout other right-wing media. Kelly brought the story to Hannity, and it was picked up by Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, radio host Jay Severin, the blogs Hot Air, Atlas Shrugs, Ace of Spades, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, and the Fox website Fox Nation.

Adams was one of Bradley Schlotzman's proteges, the notorious destroyer of the civil-rights division under Ashcroft and Gonzales and a longtime right wing vote-suppression specialist. Media Matters quotes from the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility report:

The evidence in our investigation showed that Schlozman, first as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General and subsequently as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General, considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys and in other personnel actions affecting career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division. In doing so, he violated federal law -- the Civil Service Reform Act -- and Department policy that prohibit discrimination in federal employment based on political and ideological affiliations, and committed misconduct. The evidence also showed that Division managers failed to exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices. Moreover, Schlozman made false statements about whether he considered political and ideological affiliations when he gave sworn testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and in his written responses to supplemental questions from the Committee...

Several attorneys in the Division also told us that Schlozman was open about his disdain for and lack of trust in the attorney staff of the Division. Appellate Section Chief Diana Flynn told us that in conversations with her, Schlozman alternately referred to the Appellate Section lawyers hired during prior administrations as "Democrats" and "liberals," and said they were "disloyal," could not be trusted, and were not "on the team." Flynn said Schlozman pledged to move as many of them out of the Division as he could to make room for the "real Americans" and "right-thinking Americans" he wanted to hire.

Accounts from numerous other Division employees and officials, including former AAG Wan Kim and Section Chiefs Cutlar and Flynn, as well as the context of Schlozman's e-mails, indicate that his use of terms such as "real American," "right-thinking American," being "on the team," and similar terms were Schlozman's way of referring to politically conservative applicants and attorneys. For example, an e-mail dated July 17, 2006, from Schlozman to Monica Goodling, who at the time was Senior Counsel to the Attorney General and White House Liaison, sheds light on the meaning of Schlozman's terms. In that e-mail, Schlozman recommended a friend who had interviewed with Goodling for a political position. Schlozman wrote, "I can assure you that [the applicant] is a good American. [The applicant] and Sheldon Bradshaw and I (and [one] other person) made up a four-member Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy at my former law firm." In another e-mail sent to Goodling on December 4, 2006, in which Schlozman recommended a different friend for an Immigration Judge position, Schlozman wrote, "[D]on't be dissuaded by his ACLU work on voting matters from years ago. This is a very different man, and particularly on immigration issues, he is a true member of the team."

A May 9, 2003, e-mail provides additional evidence of the meaning of Schlozman's phrases. Luis Reyes, then Counsel to the AAG for the Civil Division, sent an e-mail to Schlozman in connection with a legal matter, endorsing an attorney in the Department's Office of Legal Policy as a "right thinking american [sic] to say the least." In an e-mail response, Schlozman wrote that he "just spoke with [the attorney] to verify his political leanings and it is clear he is a member of the team.".

Despite all that, his protege Adams was kept on in the Obama administration --- according to the Washington Times article he was there until a month ago. And Media Matters reports that last October, presumably while he was still a Justice department lawyer, he penned this delightful screed for the American Spectator comparing Obama to Nobel Prize winner Norman Angell from 1933 whom he excoriated as an appeaser...read on

Rahm is supposed to be an intimidater. Send him out to clean house. Maybe he can do something right for a change.

FOX News has been getting their freak on over this story non-stop. During election day in 2008, FOX News covered this one polling place in PA as if it was symptomatic of the entire nation perpetrated by a mass horde of angry black men, when in actuality they are a very tiny splinter hate group that the original Black Panthers detest and are categorized as a hate group:

The New Black Panther Party (NBPP), whose formal name is the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, is a U.S.-based organization founded in Dallas, Texas in 1989. Despite its name, the NBPP's founding was independent and it is not an official successor organization to the Black Panther Party.[2] Members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this party is illegitimate and have vociferously objected that there "is no new Black Panther Party".[2] The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center identified the New Black Panthers as a hate group.[3][4]

FOX lied about the story and I covered it when it was happening.

It looks like FOX News and the wingnutosphere has made PA their battle ground. After the top video story turned out to be nothing at all, they went in this direction.

The Black Panthers are coming! Even though African Americans vote here 4-1...

Greg Sargent has thoroughly debunked the story anyway:

Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia. But an Obama campaign volunteer who's been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there's been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren't in any way affiliated with the campaign

"There was no fight, nothing," she says.

Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance. That's where things now stand. "There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all," she said.

The truth never gets in the way of a good FOX smear. Expect more and more on this non-story and maybe James O'Keefe and the I, Jerk can go undercover to bust up the New Black Panthers too. We hear pimp outfits are great disguises.