Patterico's Pontifications

4/9/2007

TPMmuckraker nonsense in the Clement Note

Filed under: General — WLS @ 1:29 pm



I wasn’t going to post this as a note of its own, but in adding to Patterico’s note below about Paul Clement, the TPM entry today contains this little nugget of nonsense:

That means Clement was in charge of personnel decisions relating to Monica Goodling (in other words, it was his call to make her the first ever DoJ official to stay on the payroll after pleading the Fifth) …..

Huh????

That is like saying 2+2 = 22. 

Goodling consulted a vary prominent and “wise in the ways of Washington” power attorney named John Dowd. 

Fresh off the Scooter Libby conviction, Dowd knew better than to let his client walk into a Senate Committee Hearing where all the cards are not on the table, and begin answering questions under circumstances where others at DOJ have been talking to members of the Senate behind closed doors about what his client has said or done. 

Goodling’s attorney then sends a letter announced that Goodling will not answer questions voluntarily, and if subpoenaed she will assert her rights under the Fifth Amendment.

 Since it is senior officials back at DOJ about whom she believes may have placed her in legal jeopardy necessitating the taking of the Fifth, she takes a leave of absence rather than return to work. 

 And this is all Clement’s doing/fault because …….  ?? 

 Only in left-wingnut’s mind.

What I suspect Goodling did was take a leave of absence with pay — the pay being her unused vacation time.  An employee with her service time would accumulate 4 hours of vacation time per pay period (26 pay periods per year), for a total of 13 vacation days. 

 A DOJ employee can accumulate up to 240 hours of unused vacation time — a total of 6 weeks — if they don’t use their annual allotment of vacation time each year.

 Dowd sent a letter stating Goodling’s intention to assert her Fifth Amendment rights on March 26, 2007, and at the same time began her leave of absence.

She resigned from her position with DOJ on April 6, 2007.

The period between the two events is 10 days.  

 Seems likely to me that she probably had 10 days unused vacation to cover that period of time given that she worked for DOJ for 5 years, druing which time she would have accumulated 65 days of vacation time.

 Frankly, I expect more from TPMmuckraker — I probably shouldn’t.

  

  

12 Responses to “TPMmuckraker nonsense in the Clement Note”

  1. “Seems likely to me that she probably had 10 days unused vacation to cover that period of time given that she worked for DOJ for 5 years, druing which time she would have accumulated 65 days of vacation time.”

    They should have dropped her like a rock.

    “Regent University boasts 150 alumni in the Bush administration.
    And every one of them a genius, I’m sure.
    This post at TPM links twice to the Boston Globe: here and here:

    The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.
    The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds. . .
    For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only rarely rejected.

    Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.

    Accuse others of being hacks if you want but please give your arguments some foundation.

    “Frankly, I expect more from TPMmuckraker — I probably shouldn’t.”

    Frankly, that response doesn’t cut it…

    AF (c319c8)

  2. What?

    – Clement was in charge of personnel. This is a factual claim that one can disprove.
    – If this is so, this has nothing to do with government vacation policy. It also has nothing to do with it if it isn’t true.
    – Via what mechanism, or whether, she was being payed before resigning is much less interesting than what she might say in front of Congress.
    – None of that has anything to do with her decision to attempt to use the 5th in order to not testify.

    This is rank sillyness.

    fishbane (80a96c)

  3. AF — What argument of mine lacks foundation? I am critical of the Goodling hiring/advancement given her limited background in a post below. I don’t think there is any objective evidence that she belonged in the position she occupied.

    If you want to look again — just to practice reading comprehension if nothing else — my swipe at TPM had to do with is WHOLLY UNSUPPORTED claim that Clement was somehow remiss in allowing Goodling to remain on DOJ payroll after asserting her Fifth Amendment rights to Congress.

    I simply pointed out that she likely had vacation time coming, so she was going to get paid regardless — you don’t lose your vacation time when you get fired, DOJ writes you a check for its value. Since she wasn’t in the building the last two weeks, they had time to make a decision on how to handle her situation while she was taking leave. I suspect her “resignation” was similar to the “resignations” of the 8 US Attorneys that started this whole pseudo-scandal. Frankly there’s some poetic justice in it if that was the case.

    Re the Boston Globe article, I find it curious that they put no figure on the number of Regent grads that have secured jobs with DOJ. I suspect the number is probably pretty low, and would be easy to dismiss if they put it in.

    And, why would it be surprising that the hires in a conservative GOP presidential administration — even into the Civil Rights Division — would tend to skew conservative over time? Do you believe there is only one side of the various issues litigated by the Civil Rights Division, so all new hires – regardless of whether its a GOP or Dem Administration — are going to march in single file lockstep on every such issue? Should there be a sign on the door to the Civil Rights Division “Conservatives Need Not Apply”? Do you think it stands to reason that fewer young attorneys of a liberal persuasion might be interested in applying for a civil rights job in a GOP Administration given the politics of the last 6 years?

    Do you think Civil Rights was not populated by people who agreed with political positions of Bill Lan Lee and Lani Guinier during the Clinton Admin., and those same lawyers are less likely to agree with and stick around for a Civil Rights Division that sees the issues from a more conservative point of view?

    The area of civil rights law in general, and the Civil Rights Division of DOJ in particular, have historically been a magnate for more liberal minded attorneys. So, when you get a conservative GOP administration, you might expect some tension and infighting over the manner in which the Division is run, and the career employees who don’t see eye-to-eye with the priorities of the Administration.

    You know what? Too bad — the conservatives won the election and with that comes the right to direct the priorities of the Civil Rights Division.

    If Hillary or Obama win in 2008, the “ship of justice” will change course again, and DOJ attorneys will be given a new set of Admin. priorities to pursue. Conservatives among the ranks of the career attorneys won’t like it, and many will leave, opening up slots for Hillary/Obama’s AG to hire liberal activists from the ACLU or People for th American Way.

    WLS (3f9087)

  4. Gosh, I didn’t realize I was a spammer.

    fishbane (80a96c)

  5. Question: Which constitutional right can a government employer fire you for asserting?

    1) Having an abortion.

    2) Cross-dressing.

    3) Burning a flag.

    4) Teaching your public university students to hate their country.

    5) Refusing to testify against yourself.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  6. one

    … The White House and Justice Department, under the reign of attorneys general Ashcroft and Gonzales, have encouraged over the past half decade an atmosphere that sullies the coin of the realm under our rule of law — the perceived legitimacy and authority and objectivity and neutrality and professional competence of the men and women who are tasked with enforcing our laws uniformly, fairly and without fear or favor. Without that legitimacy, the legal system devolves down into Third World status, perceived by those within and without it as subject to manipulation for political purposes.

    When you populate an office with ideologues and partisans and underachieving talent, you get an ideological and partisan office with underachieving results. And if there is any department in our federal system that can least afford to be ideological and partisan and underachieving, it is the Justice Department. This sorry state is true today, regardless of how and when the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys is resolved. Of all the dismaying legal legacies left by this administration, this one surely ranks near the top.

    two

    A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.

    Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years — prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer’s office “a mess.” …

    The number of U.S. attorneys pulling double duty in Washington is the focus of growing concern from other prosecutors and from members of the federal bench, according to legal experts and government officials…

    The growing reliance on federal prosecutors to fill Washington-based jobs also comes amid controversy over the firings of eight other U.S. attorneys last year. One of them, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, was publicly accused by the Justice Department of being an “absentee landlord” who was away from his job too much.

    Regents University webpage: “Distinctive Graduates”-“150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration”
    And the school, founded by Pat Robertson, has been around for all of 25 years.
    “Calling her five-year stint at Justice an honor, Goodling told Gonzales in her letter, “May God bless your richly as you continue your service to America.”
    These people aren’t Christians, they’re simply fundamentalists. You want me to start with the Pat Robertson quotes now?

    You’re not defending policy, you’re just defending people.

    AF (c319c8)

  7. “You’re not defending policy, you’re just defending people.”

    A sin only to a dehumanizing statist.

    nk (306f5a)

  8. “If my friends were responsible,” and were unwilling to take responsibility for anything!

    AF (c319c8)

  9. AF — lay of the hallucinogens.

    Or, go back on your meds.

    One way or another, find your way back to rationality.

    wls (859dc4)

  10. There seems to be no end to the criminality which the new Republican Party encourages and condones. They’ve really turned it into an art form.

    You must be very proud.

    Mister Natural (9dea0f)

  11. Regent University plays hide and seek with 150 Bush admin alumni — Now they’re here… Now they’re not!

    As late as 6 April, 2007, Regent University’s “facts” web page proudly boasted that they had:

    “150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration.”

    Between April 6 and April 12, the University removed that statement from their web site and, for at least several days, (April 12-16) there was no statement listed at all about any Regent U. graduates working for the Bush administration.

    Sometime on April 16, a new statement appeared on their “facts” page:

    “150 students have served in the Bush administration.”
    http://www.regent.edu/general/about_us/facts.cfm

    Apparently, not all of the 150 are still “serving” Bush, but does this statement also mean that some of those 150 “students” never actually graduated from the U?

    JStraight (6d0275)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0810 secs.