Bringing the outside in at Eric Holder's Justice Department

In January, Pajamas Media sued Eric Holder for failing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request made in the summer of 2010.  Today’s Washington Examiner has a column offering one disturbing possibility why the administration is breaking the law.  My piece details some of the hires the Obama administration has made inside the Civil Rights Division.  To protect religious liberties, DOJ hired an attorney from a historically anti-Catholic organization which has attacked public expressions of religious faith.  DOJ hired an attorney from a group dedicated to antagonizing the police and prison guards – to antagonize police and prison guards from within the Justice Department.  It is even worse, much worse.  Full story.

In December, the Justice Department filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against the Berkeley School District in Illinois. The school district had refused to allow a new teacher to take three weeks off during final exams so she could go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, an unreasonable demand far beyond what federal law requires.

The lead Justice Department lawyer on the case says a great deal about why this case was filed. The senior career trial attorney who signed the complaint, and therefore was in charge of the investigation, is Varda Hussain.