Academic

Has the Department of Justice started hiring people based on their political affilation?  It's long been rumored, now the department's inspector general and office of professional responsibility have made their report:

We found that all 7 applicants [in 2002] who indicated that they were American Constitution Society members were deselected by the Screening Committee for interviews, while 2 of the 29 applicants who indicated that they were members of the Federalist Society were deselected
[snip]
The proportion of Democratic Party affiliated applicants deselected by the Screening Committee was significantly higher (70 percent, or 43 out of 61) than the proportion of Republican Party affiliated applicants (11 percent, or 5 of 46) or the proportion of neutral affiliated applicants (32 percent, or 259 out of 804) deselected by the Committee.

Goodness.  That's quite a change for an outfit that always claimed not to hire politically, but maybe those in charge felt that there had been years of invidious ideological discrimination that by golly would be rectified by reforming the hiring process in 2002.