Quickies

The DoJ was not only firing/hiring people as U.S. attorneys, but it was also doing the same for it's Honors Program and it's Summer Interns Program. Snippet:

The decision, outlined in an internal memo distributed Thursday, returns control of the Attorney General's Honors Program and the Summer Law Intern Program to career lawyers in the department after four years during which political appointees directed the process.

...Complaints about the program emerged again this month after Senate and House investigators received a letter from the unidentified Justice employees, who alleged that hiring at the department was "consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics." The letter singled out the honors and intern programs, alleging that senior political appointees appeared to reject applicants who "had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a 'liberal' cause, or otherwise appeared to have 'liberal' leanings."

...Since 2002, when Ashcroft adopted the hiring method the department is now abandoning, a large share of honors hires have had strong conservative or Republican ties, according to Justice lawyers and law school career-placement officers.

...According to a former deputy chief in the civil rights division, one honors hire was a University of Mississippi law school graduate who had been a clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles W. PickeringSr. about the time the judge's nomination by President Bush to a federal appeals court provoked opposition by congressional Democrats, who contended that Pickering was hostile to civil rights.

A few months after he arrived, that lawyer was given a cash award by the department, after he was the only member of a four-person team in the civil rights division who sided with a Georgia voter-identification law that was later struck down by the courts as discriminatory to minorities, according to two former Justice lawyers.

Note: See, he was given a cash award for taking a position that was discriminatory and struck down by the courts. He was given money for taking a losing position. And, finally, this quote from the article:

"When I started," the former honors program lawyer said, "it was rare you met people whose civil rights credentials were that they were part of the Federalist Society, but it became a commonplace thing."

The Saudis aren't towing the line like they used to for the Bush Administration and the Bushies are confused.

Rebuilt projects in Iraq are crumbling.

A view of going to college and student loans from a Brit living in America. Warning: it's not friendly to Bush.

Wolfowitz tried to cover his tracks regarding his mistress' job. He's so toast.

One Bush appointee resigns over the DC Madam scandal and there are thousands of more names on the list, including Pentagon and White House officials. The official who resigned was U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. Tobias was the former head of Eli Lilly and was in charge of helping men in poor countries "develop healthy relationships with women". He was also a point man in pursuing the administration's abstinence only programs to other nations. Snippet from Think Progress' transcript of a Brian Ross report (emphasis is my own):

Well, David, I talked to him one day before he resigned and told him that we had found his name and personal phone number on a list of clients of the so-called DC Madam’s escort service in Washington. And what he told me was that he in fact had been a customer of the service, but that he had not had sex. He had had what he called gals come over to his condo to give him a massage. He claimed there was no sex but that he was stunned by the fact that we were aware he was a client and that was his conversation. I asked him if he knew any of the young women, their names. He said he didn’t remember them at all. He said it was like ordering pizza.

Pam at Pandagon has more.