Partisanship at its worst

If you're wondering how high this Bush Administration has set the bar on partisanship, take a look at former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Monica Goodling. See, Monica was a student at Regent University. When she was a student then, education took a backseat to religion.

The Regent Law School, located in Virginia Beach, VA, was founded in 1986, after Oral Roberts University's law school closed and donated its library to Regent University.[1] The law school was accredited by the ABA in 1989 and had an enrollment of 489 students in 2006.[2] Currently, the school offers a J.D. degree, which is typically completed in three years of full-time study or four years of part-time study.[3] 61% of Regent students pass the bar on their first attempt; the Virginia state average is 74%.[4]

In the Fall 2006 entering class, 333 of 630 applicants were offered admission.[2] Of 333 students accepted, 161 matriculated.[2] In the entering class, the median Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score was 153 and the median undergraduate grade-point average was 3.30.[2]

Regent Law was ranked in Tier 4 by U.S. News, the lowest ranking and essentially a tie for 136th place out of 170 schools surveyed.[5] The Princeton Review ranked the school fourth in the country for quality of life, based on "student assessment of: whether there is a strong sense of community at the school, how aesthetically pleasing the law school is, the location of the law school, the quality of the social life, classroom facilities, and the library staff."[6]

Those numbers, however, didn't stop the Bush Administration from taking in over 150 Regent graduates to federal government positions as exampled from the report from the Boston Globe:

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.

That same report also reported this frighting statistic:

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.

To cap it off, all 150 graduates of Regent University who are in positions of power in the Bush Administration have one person to thank to this: the founder of the Christian Law School, televangelist Pat Robertson.

Yes, Pat Robertson.

The same guy who stated that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez should be assassinated.
The same guy who used his non profit organization Operation Blessing to make diamond and gold deals with African dictators Mobuto Sese Seko and Charles Taylor.

That is how high the Bush Administration has raised the bar on partisanship.