"character matters"

Perhaps Monica Goodling had grown tired of more standard interview questions when she started asking applicants to the Justice Department slight variants of Stephen Colbert's standard question to congresspeople: "George W. Bush--great president or the greatest president?" Goodling, who attended Regent University Law School (a school, according to Dean Jeffrey Brauch, that is "committed to the proposition that there is truth--eternal principles of justice--about the way we should practice law and about the law itself. We believe character matters. We talk openly about how an attorney can have integrity and humility in a profession that challenges both"), asked applicants what it was about George W. Bush that made the applicant want to serve him. According to the New York Times, Goodling scanned resumes for “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.” She also made notes that ensured the applicant was sufficiently conservative on, as she put it in her interview notes, "god, guns + gays."

Goodling displayed her commitment to "eternal principles of justice" in many ways. In one exemplary case, she propagated "unfounded rumors" that an applicant was gay and having an affair with her superior, Margaret Chiara, one of the nine U.S. Attorneys fired without explanation.

The applicant did not get the job.

(Monica/Angela picture via Swampland.)

(Link to NYT article)