The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Office of the Inspector General released this report (pdf) today concerning the hiring process at DOJ. Unsurprisingly, the report concludes that Monica "I didn't mean to" Goodling, Kyle Sampson, and others violated federal law by taking the personal political viewpoints of job applicants into account when filling DOJ career positions.

The report marks the culmination of a yearlong investigation by Justice's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the nation's premier law enforcement agency that is expected to be above partisan politics.

The report points to White House involvement in the hiring process:

Continuing his pronounced move to the extreme right, John McCain announced his support for an Arizona initiative to ban affirmative action:

Presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday endorsed a proposal to ban affirmative action programs in his home state, a policy that Democratic rival Barack Obama called a disappointing embrace of divisive tactics. In the past, McCain has criticized such ballot initiatives.

Barack Obama rightly notes that this is yet another reversal of McCain's position and a move to the extreme right:

"I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right," Obama said, referring to a leading critic of affirmative action.

John McCain continues to makes himself one of the most extreme Presidential candidates we have seen run for office. That he has reversed himself on so much to make this rightward move shows there is not an ounce of maverick in him. He is a prototypical extreme right wing Republican candidate.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

The TL kid and I finally got our new iPhones today. It's just like the iPod touch only it has a phone. Since I spent the better part of last week learning how to use the iPod touch, I'm hoping the phone will be an easy learning curve.

Not everyone loves it. This Washington Post reporter just returned his iPhone.

More...

We know that in a recent speech Attorney General Mukasey "demanded that Congress swiftly pass measures that would sharply reduce the possibility that any Guantánamo prisoner could have a fair hearing." Could it be that Mukasey is worried that a full and fair hearing would expose the administration's detention of individuals on flimsy -- or perhaps nonexistent -- evidence?

That might explain why the administration quietly released Jaralla Saleh Kahla al-Marri, a Quatari citizen who had been detained without charges or trial since 2001. If the Guantanamo detainees are really "the worst of the worst," as the administration has assured us, why was Jaralla al-Marri detained for seven years only to be released with no showing of wrongdoing whatsoever?

The immigration raid on Agriprocessors, the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant is having greater repurcussions. Abhorrent labor conditions by the employer are coming to light.

in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.

Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant.

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The Dalai Lama gave a keynote speech yesterday in Aspen, a day after John McCain visited him there.

In Saturday's speech, he didn't mention McCain. Anita Thompson was there, and writing in HuffPo today, recaps the Dalai Lama's talk.

She begins:

My late husband, Hunter S. Thompson, said that he was a teenage girl trapped in the body of an elderly dope fiend. I realized something as I watched the highest ranking monk of Tibetan Buddhism: His Holiness is a teenage girl trapped in the body of a Dalai Lama! It was all very familiar, indeed spectacular, as I observed his demeanor during the keynote address he gave at the Aspen Institute Saturday. I have studied the Dalai Lama's teachings, practiced another form of Buddhism, and am even more curious now because Hunter was so often compared to him.

Here's what the Dalai Lama had to say on war in the 21st century: [More...]

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is trying to understand why California's prosecutors seek the death penalty in some cases but not in others. More particularly, the Commission wants to know if the race of the victim or of the defendant influences that decision.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1977, death sentences against black defendants, but not Latinos, have been disproportionately enormous by almost every measure: population, homicide rates, victim data and the sentencing patterns of other states. California's 5-to-1 ratio of blacks on death row to blacks in the state population, measured in percentages, is much higher than the ratios in Texas, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. The national average is 3 to 1. ...

Twenty-four percent of the people arrested for homicide are black, but blacks make up 36% of the current death row population. Latinos are 46% of homicide arrestees but 20% of death row inmates.... In death sentences against all ethnic groups, 59% have involved a white victim. Yet whites are only about 22% of homicide victims.

Prosecutors have not been forthcoming in answering the Commission's questions. [more ...]

I think Obama has this election won barring some unforeseeable event. But I find it silly when Obama supporters tie themselves in knots to explain away non-positive news. Not to pick on anyone in particular, but tremayne at Open Left provides a prime example of this silly stuff:

This took way too long:

The Army formally apologized Saturday for the wrongful conviction of 28 black soldiers accused of rioting and lynching an Italian prisoner of war in Seattle more than six decades ago. ... In addition, the soldiers' convictions were set aside, their dishonorable discharges were changed to honorable discharges and they and their survivors were awarded back pay for their time in the brig.

All but two of the soldiers are dead. One, Samuel Snow of Leesburg, Fla., planned to attend the ceremony but wound up in the hospital instead because of a problem with his pacemaker.

In 2002, Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein wrote:

President Bush's choice stands on firm legal ground insofar as he seeks to use military commissions to try people who planned and participated in the September 11 attacks (and similar actions).

In 2006, the Supreme Court decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where it stated:

Together, the UCMJ, the AUMF, and the DTA at most acknowledge a general Presidential authority to convene military commissions in circumstances where justified under the “Constitution and laws,” including the law of war. Absent a more specific congressional authorization, the task of this Court is, as it was in Quirin, to decide whether Hamdan’s military commission is so justified. . . The[] facts cast doubt on the legality of the charge and, hence, the commission; . . . the offense alleged must have been committed both in a theater of war and during, not before, the relevant conflict. But the deficiencies in the time and place allegations also underscore—indeed are symptomatic of—the most serious defect of this charge: The offense it alleges is not triable by law-of-war military commission.

More . . .

Oh she tries to retain her cynical worldly approach and the title tries to stir up trouble, but Maureen Dowd got, to use her phrase, Obamarized. She portrays Obama as the anti-presumptuous one. Some snippets:

After 200,000 people thronged to see Obama at the Victory Column in Berlin, christening him “Redeemer” and “Savior,” it turned out Sarko [French President Nicolas Sarkozy] was also Obamarized, as the Germans were calling the mesmerizing effect. “You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased [Obama] after the amorous joint press conference, as he flew from Paris to London for the finale of his grand tour.

“I think we could work well together,” he said of Sarko, smiling broadly.

More . . .

Less cheery, more political version from Fahrenheit 911 here.

Is anyone still up? Here's an open thread for night owls and early birds.