From Today's Washington Post

"Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders: Less Preference Shown for Locals, Senators' Choices" by Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen.

No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors' jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney's offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.

The pattern from Bush's second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous pursuit of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials have seeded federal prosecutors' offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration's agenda.

Comment: Good knowledge generation in the legal system depends, in part, on that system not being overly politicized. If the system develops knowledge that benefits one party and does not develop knowledge that benefits the other, the public interest suffers. It is the U.S. Attorney's in the U.S. federal system who decide what information to seek and to make public. JAD

"Program's Creator Is Hired to Assess It," Associated Press

The government contractor that set up a billion-dollar-a-year federal reading program for the Education Department and failed, according to the department's inspector general, to keep it free of conflicts of interest is one of the companies now evaluating the program.

Comment: Good knowledge generation in the bureaucracy depends, in part, on external evaluation of programs. (It also depends on the Inspectors General doing a good job; that function has also been criticized as performed by Bush appointees.) It is bad practice to ask the people who implemented a program to evaluate that program. The problem with doing so is not only that hiring a fox to guard the hen house is a bad idea, but that new eyes may not have the same blind spots as the old." JAD

These examples seem to add to the growing picture of an administration that does not properly value the quality of high quality knowledge in making a democratic system work well.