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.