With call to jail Hillary Clinton, Trump’s GOP demands the criminalization of politics

By Jon Perr
Sunday Oct 16, 2016 · 11:01 AM EDT

On July 28, 2008, the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility jointly published the results of a year-long investigation into the hiring practices at the Bush DOJ. As the AP reported, "A new Justice Department report concludes that politics illegally influenced the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges, and largely lays the blame on top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales." Unsurprisingly, the report singled out Gonzales' White House liaison Monica Goodling for "violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists."

That finding was unsurprising because Ms. Goodling had already admitted as much. During her May 23, 2007 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, she acknowledged that "on some occasions" in the hiring of career prosecutors "I crossed the line of the civil service rules." Admitting that she illicitly screened out civil service job applicants who happened to be Democrats, Goodling clarified for all why she sought immunity from the committee in the first place:

"I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes."

But during his questioning, Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence ignored Goodling's confession to make a different point about the Bush administration's purge of U.S. attorneys then under investigation.

"I'm listening very intently. I'm studying this case, and I want to explore this issue of illegal behavior with you. Because it seems to me, so much of this, and even something of what we've heard today in this otherwise cordial hearing, is about the criminalization of politics. In a very real sense, it seems to be about the attempted criminalization of things that are vital to our constitutional system of government, namely the taking into consideration of politics in the appointment of political officials within the government." [Emphasis mine.]

"I am troubled," Pence concluded, "about the fact that we seem to be moving ever further down the road of the criminalization of politics."

Alas, that was then, and this is now. And now, Mike Pence and his running mate Donald Trump are in danger of being on the receiving end of a Nov. 8 beat down at the hands of Democrat Hillary Clinton. And that means Trump, Pence, and the "lock her up" crowd calling for her arrest and prosecution are demanding the criminalization of politics they once claimed to detest—and much, much worse.

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http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/16/1581675/-With-call-to-jail-Hillary-Clinton-Trump-s-GOP-demands-the-criminalization-of-politics