Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Get Mukasey a dictionary

Justice Staffers Won't Be Prosecuted For Illegal Hiring Practices
Former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday.

Mukasey used his sharpest words yet to criticize the senior leaders who took part in or failed to stop illegal hiring practices during the tenure of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.

But, he told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.
Hey Mike, I don't want to dispute your legal knowledge, seeing as I myself am not a jurisprudentologist, but I'm pretty sure violating a law is a crime. In fact I'm pretty goddamn sure that's the textbook definition of a crime.
Main Entry:
crime Listen to the pronunciation of crime
Pronunciation:
\ˈkrīm\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin crimen accusation, reproach, crime; probably akin to Latin cernere to sift, determine
Date:
14th century
1: an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law; especially : a gross violation of law

Though to be fair, that's not information that the attorney general should know. Leave the definitions to the eggheads at Merriam-Webster and leave the prosecution decidin' to experts like you. After all, how can we expect that people doing the hiring at the JD would know that they aren't supposed to discriminate based on anything other than the qualifications of the people who apply? It's not like it's an obvious, well known law, and that the Feddy Gov prints it on every single job opening notice it puts out. How can Monica Goodling be expected to know that? Let her off scot free and keep all the right-wingers she illegally hired there.

It's important to know we are a government built on laws the honor system.

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