From: Rich Gauszka 

It also has to do with how hiring standards changed in justice as  civil
rights law and the average ranking of the law school attended by the
applicant became less of a factor over a more conservative ( perhaps even
religious ) zeal.

FWIW I can understand a portion of your objections as I felt the law school
prayer in a religious university was superfluous to the gist of the story.

The reporter recently erred his way to a Pulitzer prize reporting on the
Bush signing statement revelations

http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070417/NEWS/704170423/1052

Gary Britt wrote:
> That's far from all they wrote Rich you no better than that.  The very
> first thing they wrote was a snide bigoted comment about a private
> religious law school class saying a brief prayer.  That's got nothing to
> do with anything except anti-religious, anti-Christian bigotry.  The
> article had a couple of facts, many factual errors and a ton of
> bigotry.  Not worth the read.
>
> Gary
>
> Rich Gauszka wrote:
>> So to report the grant of preferences to a lowest rank tier 4 school
>> smacks of religious bigotry? If you read the article in it's entirety
>> it did mention that Regent has improved it's standards since 1999 (
>> Gooding's class ) where 60 % failed the bar exam ( 71% now pass ) .
>>
>> I agree that not all those that graduate from a 'prestigious'
>> university are the best and the brightest - George W Bush comes to mind
>>
>> "Gary Britt" 
wrote in message
>> news:464b7251$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>> There are so many anti-religious, anti-Christian bigoted statements
>>> and attempted slurs in this article that it is not possible to any
>>> part of it seriously, unless one's own bigotry predisposes them to
>>> agree with the slurs and bigotry contained in the article.
>>>
>>> 1.  First it starts out by attempting to say by implication that
>>> prayer in a religious private law school means something bad about
>>> the students in that school.  Time to stop reading really right there.
>>>
>>> 2.  It states Monica Goodling worked at DOJ when that is false.  She
>>> worked at the WHITEHOUSE and was liaison from the whitehouse to DOJ.
>>>
>>> 3.  It states as though it were fact that if you don't have
>>> prosecutorial experience you can't have anything to do with
>>> evaluating statistics that measure performance criteria and aren't
>>> qualified to evaluate whether a person is following policy directives
>>> set by the head of the executive branch.  Then it goes on to imply
>>> that graduates from a different school that doesn't pray but have
>>> absolutely no more prosecutorial experience are qualified to do these
>>> things.
>>>
>>> 4.  It states by implication that a person from Harvard is more
>>> qualified for government work than a person from another University,
>>> and argues we should let the Harvard/Yale sycophants hire only other
>>> socio-economic bigots and religion hating atheists from the same in
>>> bred left wing academies from which they were spawned.
>>>
>>> 5.  Similar articles have appeared recently complaining that somebody
>>> who was a member of the conservative federalist society was hired and
>>> he didn't come from Harvard but came from the University of
>>> Kentucky.  Oh my god!  The horrors.  I hope he didn't once hang up on
>>> somebody without saying good bye like John Bolton.  Then there was
>>> another recent complaint about somebody who was hired from a school
>>> other than Harvard or Yale who actually kept a bust of James Madison
>>> (author of many of the federalist papers) in his office instead of
>>> the mandatory Karl Marx bust.  Ok I made up the Karl Marx part, but
>>> they really complained the guy wasn't qualified because he thought
>>> highly of James Madison (Madison is of course a favorite of the
>>> federalist society lawyers and that alone is a disqualification to
>>> DOJ service to the likes of the bigots like the author of this
>>> useless crap you linked to and quoted from.
>>>
>>> 6. God forbid the DOJ should have people in it that wouldn't give a
>>> cover-up sweetheart deal to Sandy Berger and then not even enforce
>>> the terms of that sweetheart deal by not requiring him to take a lie
>>> detector test that he agreed to take to detail what he stole, what he
>>> destroyed, and what information was in the materials he stole and
>>> destroyed that have been permanently kept from the 9/11 commission
>>> and the American people. Yes it was those kinds of career civil
>>> servants in the DOJ that should determine who is hired at DOJ.
>>>
>>> The DOJ and much of the shadow government known as the federal
>>> bureaucracy needs are sharp kick in the ass out the door.  I think
>>> everyone under Gonzales and above Janitor at DOJ should be fired
>>> immediately.  The place wreaks from decades of inbreeding and incest
>>> of type this moron you cite argues should be the norm in perpetuity.
>>>
>>> Gary
>>>
>>> Rich Gauszka wrote:
>>>> From Oral Roberts University?
>>>>
>>>>
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/04/08/scandal_pu
ts_spotlight_on_christian_law_school/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The title of the course was Constitutional
>>>> Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a
>>>> student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed
>>>> with "amens," about the need to preserve their
Christian values.
>>>>
>>>> "Sin is so appealing because it's easy and because
it's fun," the
>>>> law student warned.
>>>> Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat
>>>> Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change
the world," has
>>>> worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation,
>>>> fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn't pass
>>>> the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League
>>>> teams in national law student competitions.
>>>>
>>>> But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than
>>>> the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among
>>>> the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni
>>>> hired to federal government positions since President Bush took
>>>> office in 2001, according to a university website.
>>>>
>>>> One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to
>>>> Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm
>>>> over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday,
>>>> has become the face of Regent overnight -- and drawn a harsh
>>>> spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at
>>>> smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic
>>>> reputations.
>>>>
>>>> Documents show that Goodling, who has asserted her Fifth Amendment
>>>> right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before
>>>> Congress, was one of a handful of officials overseeing the firings.
>>>> She helped install Timothy Griffin , the Karl Rove aide and her
>>>> former boss at the Republican National Committee, as a replacement
>>>> US attorney in Arkansas.
>>>>
>>>> Because Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and has scant
>>>> prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the
>>>> performance of US attorneys have come under fire. Senator Sheldon
>>>> Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked at a hearing:
"Should we
>>>> be concerned with the experience level of the people who are making
>>>> these highly significant decisions?"
>>>>
>>>> And across the political blogosphere, critics have held up Goodling,
>>>> who declined to be interviewed, as a prime example of the Bush
>>>> administration subordinating ability to politics in hiring
decisions.
>>>>
>>>> "It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were
generally reserved for
>>>> the best of the legal profession," wrote a
contributor to The New
>>>> Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of
one of the very
>>>> worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant
>>>> experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there
>>>> is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."
>>>>
>>>> The Regent law school was founded in 1986, when Oral Roberts
>>>> University shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to
>>>> Robertson's Bible-based college in Virginia. It was initially called
>>>> "CBN University School of Law" after the
televangelist's Christian
>>>> Broadcasting Network, whose studios share the campus and which
>>>> provided much of the funding for the law school. (The Coors
>>>> Foundation is also a donor to the university.) The American Bar
>>>> Association accredited Regent 's law school in 1996.
>>>>
>>>> Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal
>>>> government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of
>>>> Regent's government school, Kay Coles James , to be the director of
>>>> the Office of Personnel Management -- essentially the head of human
>>>> resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for
>>>> government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.
>>>>
>>>> "We've had great placement," said Jay Sekulow ,
who heads a non
>>>> profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at
>>>> lowering barriers between church and state. "We've had a lot of
>>>> people in key positions."
>>>>
>>>> Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling,
>>>> joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was
>>>> further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney
>>>> general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill
>>>> vacancies in the career ranks.
>>>>
>>>> Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and
>>>> recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite
>>>> schools.
>>>>
>>>> In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described
>>>> being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice
>>>> Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name
>>>> the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most
>>>> disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a
>>>> law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.
>>>>
>>>> "When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in
>>>> Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the
question,"
>>>> wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the
>>>> Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer
>>>> he received after graduation, he said.
>>>>
>>>> The graduate from Regent -- which is ranked a "tier
four" school by
>>>> US News & World Report, the lowest score and
essentially a tie for
>>>> 136th place --  was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to
>>>> be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration
>>>> imposed greater political control over career hiring.
>>>>
>>>> The changes resulted in a sometimes dramatic alteration to the
>>>> profile of new hires beginning in 2003, as the Globe reported last
>>>> year after obtaining resumes from 2001-2006 to three sections in the
>>>> civil rights division. Conservative credentials rose, while prior
>>>> experience in civil rights law and the average ranking of the law
>>>> school attended by the applicant dropped.
>>>>
>>>> As the dean of a lower-ranked law school that benefited from the
>>>> Bush administration's hiring practices, Jeffrey Brauch of Regent
>>>> made no apologies in a recent interview for training students to
>>>> understand what the law is today, and also to understand how legal
>>>> rules should be changed to better reflect "eternal
principles of
>>>> justice," from divorce laws to abortion rights
>>>>
>>>> We anticipate that many of our graduates are going to go and be
>>>> change agents in society," Brauch said.
>>>>
>>>> Still, Brauch said, the recent criticism of the law school triggered
>>>> by Goodling's involvement in the US attorney firings has missed the
>>>> mark in one respect: the quality of the lawyers now being turned out
>>>> by the school, he argued, is far better than its image.
>>>>
>>>> Seven years ago, 60 percent of the class of 1999 -- Goodling's class
>>>> --  failed the bar exam on the first attempt. (Goodling's
>>>> performance was not available, though she is admitted to the bar in
>>>> Virginia.) The dismal numbers prompted the school to overhaul its
>>>> curriculum and tighten admissions standards.
>>>>
>>>> It has also spent more heavily to recruit better-qualified law
>>>> students. This year, it will spend $2.8 million on scholarships, a
>>>> million more than what it was spending four years ago.
>>>>
>>>> The makeover is working. The bar exam passage rate of Regent alumni
>>>> , according to the Princeton Review, rose to 67 percent last year.
>>>> Brauch said it is now up to 71 percent, and that half of the
>>>> students admitted in the late 1990s would not be accepted today. The
>>>> school has also recently won moot-court and negotiation
>>>> competitions, beating out teams from top-ranked law schools.
>>>>
>>>> Adding to Regent's prominence, its course on "Human
Rights, Civil
>>>> Liberties, and National Security" is co taught by one
of its newest
>>>> professors: Ashcroft.
>>>>
>>>> Even a prominent critic of the school's mission of integrating the
>>>> Bible with public policy vouches for Regent's improvements. Barry
>>>> Lynn , the head of the liberal Americans United for the Separation
>>>> of Church and State, said Regent is churning out an increasingly
>>>> well-trained legal army for the conservative Christian movement.
>>>>
>>>> "You can't underestimate the quality of a lot of the
people that are
>>>> there," said Lynn, who has guest-lectured at Regent and debated
>>>> professors on its campus.
>>>>
>>>> In light of Regent's rapid evolution, some current law students say
>>>> it is frustrating to be judged in light of Regent alumni from the
>>>> school's more troubled era -- including Goodling.
>>>>
>>>> One third-year student, Chamie Riley , said she rejected the idea
>>>> that any government official who invokes her Fifth Amendment right
>>>> against self-incrimination could be a good representative of Regent.
>>>>
>>>> As Christians, she said, Regent students know "you
should be morally
>>>> upright. You should not be in a situation where you have to plead
>>>> the Fifth."
>>>>
>>>>
>>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5