I'll have to respectfully disagree with Michael Scherer here. The Regent-White House connection is very relevant to what's going on at the DOJ.

Just as Goodling knew, from the words "Howard University," whether a DOJ job applicant was black (or, as Goodling apparently put it, "likely to have liberal leanings") and was therefore an undesirable person, Gonzales and his subordinates can depend on a "Regent" grad to be not just a neoconservative, or an evangelical Christian, but a very specific kind of evangelical neoconservative. (The kind who couldn't get into a real law school! [rimshot] Sorry -- I couldn't resist.)

To suggest that disdain for Regent Law School is somehow akin to anti-Semitic prejudice is facile. Regent is a pseudo-university designed to funnel bigoted conservatives into elite positions in industry and government, through the magic of cronyism. Unlike traditionally Jewish univesities like Brandeis -- or many Christian colleges across the country, from Notre Dame to SMU to Baylor -- Regent (like Liberty University and Bob Jones University) is not sincerely committed to free debate. Nor, for that matter, can Pat Robertson and his ilk rightly be called champions of freedom of religion. I am not a Christian, which means, under the dogma espoused by Regent's law professors, that I am something less than a full citizen in this "Christian nation."

On another level, it's just gross that the Bush White House is scraping the barrel to find people to work at the highest levels of government. Surely, Mr. Scherer, you're aware that some observers are concerned about the fact that "the best and brightest" are less interested than ever in "service" careers in government. The revelation that Bush and Gonzales were filling their staffs from what may really be -- and this is not hyperbole -- the single worst law school in America (i.e., not merely a "forth-tier" [sic] school) should be totally disheartening to anyone, of whatever background or faith, who's worked hard, and worked honestly, to get a quality education.

A Regent education simply is not a "quality education" in comparison to the program you'd find at the typical college or community college. There is no spirit of inquiry or intellectual curiosity there; it is an institution that seeks to crush iconoclastic thinkers, rather than to nurture them. (Compare this to, e.g., Brigham Young University, where dissent and debate aren't merely tolerated, but, to an extent, encouraged -- and where the professor are genuine academics, rather than pseudo-academics.)

For context: I went to a decent public law school (the University of Texas at Austin). I was rejected by Harvard and couldn't afford Stanford or NYU, where I was accepted. I'm hardly an Ivy League elitist, or even someone who thinks that a Harvard diploma is particularly impressive. (I know some real idiots who went to Harvard Law . . . and how great could the school be, given that they rejected me? Eh? Eh?) But it offends my sense of fair play -- and scandalizes me as a taxpayer -- to learn that my government would rather hire pinheads handpicked by Pat Robertson's lackeys than to draw from a huge pool of willing candidates from the dozens of excellent law schools across the country.

Football (and -- okay -- walking) may be out . . . but your writing is as sharp as ever.

Thanks for another lovely piece.

Are we at a point, now, where most Americans are unlikely to be shocked -- or even to care -- if these allegations of CIA child abduction and torture turn out to be true?

That's what's so depressing for me about all of these "scandals" -- official disappearances being the scariest and worst of the lot; in the past, I could reassure myself that the fact that I was learning about them meant that "the truth was coming out," with everything that that implied. Now the truth comes out, but the results are different -- no public outrage (except among the readership of certain blogs), no apologies, resignations, investigations, etc.

If nothing else, it was sometimes possible to reassure oneself, in the past, that some members of the mainstream media and political establishment would recognize the importance of revelations (or half-revelations) like these. But that doesn't seem to be true anymore either. As a few bloggers have pointed out, most of the reporters covering today's CIA "black prisons" story didn't even think it worth mentioning that young children had been disappeared along with their parents.

I'm trying to close this comment with something less pessimistic, but I can't think of anything.

PS, re Tiberius: don't feed the troll.

PPS, to the person who made the quip comparing GG to Rumsfeld: there are some things we're supposed to know with certainty about our own government. Ambiguity about another country's weapons program is not the same as ambiguity about our own country's torture program. The fact that we don't know, to a certainty, exactly who our government is torturing, and where, and how, and why, is meaningful in itself. (Wait -- did that make sense? Anyway: your joke wasn't that great.)