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The Ridiculous LexisNexis Search that the Justice Department Used
[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!
Needless to say, when asked about it, Williams first said she didn't remember ever seeing it, then said she'd used an edited version just once. LexisNexis records show she used it, as shown, 25 times." Note that 'sex!' appears twice in the query. Must be VERY important.
Dropping Monica Goodling into that query returns 653 results in the last 2 years.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
There are certain high level posts in the various executive branch agencies that are tagged 'political appointments'. These jobs, which steer those agencies, can be determined based on politics.
For everything else, such discrimination is illegal. It is assumed, by the law, that people are professional enough to do their job regardless of who is in charge - and anyway, they can be fired if they intentionally sabotage the agency without legal cause.
Only recently, since the Neocons took over, has it even been an issue that 'attorneys hate' the people they work for. I mean, really, is such harsh language remotely accurate? Or is it being used as a boogie man in order to make an end-run around very wise laws; laws that prevent the government from swinging to extremes with every change in the administration.
(And lets not even bring up the fiscal nightmare it must be if agencies have to rehire everyone every eight years...)
Now, with my straight face: Clinton did NOT weed out conservatives from executive branch jobs. He in fact explicitly hired many people across the aisle, for better or for worse. The idea that you never hire people who disagree with you is one that has only seen it's heyday in the last eight years. It's actually often a very good idea.
[Ego]out
Back when I used LN a lot, about ten years ago, the thing that made it useful to me even when searching through sources that were indexed elsewhere as well were the search terms like A w/5 B, which searches for term A within 5 words of B. That always produced much more relevant results than A and B, and despite all the praise of things like Pagerank, I've never seen a modern internet search engine give nearly as good of results as I was always able to find using this sort of technique.
Is this type of search still limited to LN, or are there ways to do the same sort of thing on Yahoo/Google/etc?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
To further illuminate what Goodling was doing, she told this to a U.S. Attorney telling him he could hire another prosecutor for his office:
"Tell Brad he can hire one more good American."
"good American" is Goodling and probably Bush administration code for conservative, Christian, homophobe, pro life, Bush supporting, Republican. The implication being all other American's are "bad" Americans. How does it feel to live in a country where your Executive Branch has branded you as a "bad" American unless you live and think the way they expect you to live and think.
It is an entirely acceptable standard for political appointees who will come and go with the President who appoints them. It is expected for them to be ideologues in the same mold as their boss. It is an illegal and unacceptable criteria for career civil servants who, once they enter the ranks of civil service, are nearly impossible to get rid of unless they leave of their on accord.
The report unfortunately stops short of finding who directed Goodling to do this, but since she was the DOJ liason to the White House chances are it was Rove, Myers, Cheney and or Bush, who were probably directing Goodling to fill the Justice Department ranks with career civil servants, who need not be well qualified for their jobs, but who were certified ideologues who would carry the right wing flag for decades to come and slant prosecutions and the law in the direction their ideology dictated.
The DOJ has received all the attention but there is an open question if the same program was being practiced in some or all of the other departments and agencies under control of the Executive Branch. If it was there may be an army of entrenched Republican ideologue civil servants who will frustrate future President they don't agree with for decades to come.
@de_machina
Don't want to blow my moderation..
I don't consider neocons to be ultra conservative.
They spend money like drunken sailors, the support the expansion of the federal government, they ignore the constitution.
OTH, they are pro military, pro corporation, and use religion as a glue to get enough votes to advance their position. I.e. Neocons are very close to facists / corporatists.
I'm not saying that in a half naked hippy screaming "fascist!" kind of way at law abiding cops doing their jobs. I'm looking at the neocons actions- comparing them to historical factions and concluding that the closest match I find is fascists.
After watching the 911 truth movement pull together massive amounts of correlations based of basically nothing I am in awe of the human ability to rationalize correlations. I can see the dangers of this stuff outweighing the benefits in almost every way.
I can only wonder how many small coincidences could be completly misconstrued during both investigations, or other things such as affairs.