Huffington Post: “Former Justice Department officials are pushing back on a report released last week that they say falsely equates the Bush administration’s politicization of the department’s Voting Section with the Obama administration’s efforts to get the demoralized division back on track.”

People have tried to spin me with the “false equivalence” argument too but I don’t buy it.  The department is a mess, and it is way too ideologically polarized for a government agency.

I made these points in my recent Slate piece.  It is interesting to me that this piece has gotten many fewer links and likes than my Slate pieces usually get. I attribute it to the fact that it has a message which does not appeal to liberals—that there’s still a problem of polarization and unprofessionalism in the department—and one which does not appeal to conservatives—that most of the problems they’ve flagged with the Obama DOJ in terms of biased enforcement and hiring decisions were rejected by the IG.

As the IG concluded: “Other Department components—including components that specialize in subject areas that are also politically controversial, such as environmental protection—do not appear to suffer from the same degree of polarization and internecine conflict. We believe the difference is largely a function of leadership and culture, and that steps must be taken to address the professional culture of the Voting Section and the perception that political or ideological considerations have affected important administrative and enforcement decisions there.”