ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE SPEAKS UP

Politics weakens Justice Dept. independence
By Marisa Taylor and Margaret Talev McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Mon, June 18, 2007


“We have a Justice Department that has substantially been turned into a political arm of the White House,” said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, who's become one of the conservative movement’s fiercest critics of the president.

“To elicit confidence in the legitimacy of law enforcement, you have to at least create the appearance to the public that prosecutorial decisions and high-level personnel decisions do not pivot on political affiliation,” Fein said. “Irrespective of whether there’s actual partisanship in these decisions, the fear among the public is that this is occurring. It creates a chilling effect on the entire political discourse of the country.”