Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Fox Appointed to Guard the Hen House

The decision to have the Office of Special Counsel investigate Karl Rove has Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Scott Bloch, who will be investigating Karl Rove, is not exactly a paragon of virtue. He is a Bush appointee to take the place of the openly gay Clinton appointee Elaine Kaplan. The facts that the Office of Special Counsel doesn't normally handle this type of investigation (the news folks have been referring to this as "a little known" agency in the government), and that Bloch is who he is, make me greatly suspicious that Karl himself ordered this particular investigation to avoid having the Democrats inevitably demand an independent counsel investigation into his activities.

Bloch's appointment wasn't popular with the Log Cabin Republicans (a gay organization - and how any gay could be a Republican is beyond me, but...) nor other people concerned with civil liberties. But it was in fact a typical Bush choice.

Yesterday, in testimony before the United States Senate, Bloch said that he did not believe current law protects federal employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

[...]

"Scott Bloch has made it clear that he is not enforcing the law and is openly defying the President, accordingly he should resign immediately," said Log Cabin Political Director Chris Barron.

  SourceWatch 2005 article

I have to say here that, although the President may avoid officially enacting gay discriminatory laws, one would not actually be defying him by practicing discrimination. He wouldn't have appointed this particular man to a whistle-blower protection agency if he were really concerned about gay rights.

Scott Bloch, is decimating the ability of government employees to turn in their bosses for wrongdoing -- which is apparently the way George W. Bush wants it. After all, Bush has spent five years replacing the government's inspectors general -- each agency's watchdog for investigating whistleblower complaints -- with partisan hacks.

[...]

The Office of Special Counsel exists to protect federal workers from job discrimination and whistle-blowing retaliation. Here's how Scott Bloch turned it into a haven for gay-bashing and partisan politics.

  Alternet article

Bloch, from Kansas, was appointed to the OSC in 2003 after serving in Bush's Office of Faith Based Initiatives.

WaPo photo


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