Monica Goodling: That was illegal, obviously.

Something straightforward happened today at the Department of Justice: The department released a report. The report was about the many illegal hirings and firings that you’ve likely read about in the news. A few years back, a bunch of people lost their jobs because of their (leftist) political leanings. Around the same time, a bunch more people got hired at the DOJ, also because of politics (but these people leaned more to the right).

The report released today blames, among others, Monica Goodling, who worked under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Goodling streamlined the hirings by weeding out candidates who appeared too Democratic. White House officials searched the Internet for anything that “exposed” an applicant’s politics, and Goodling and others pre-approved applicants who seemed conservative — and blacklisted those who did not.

At the DOJ, people are supposed be hired and fired based on their credentials, not their politics. So what Goodling et al did was illegal.

Pretty straightforward.

Now try digging through this New York Times lead:

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broke Civil Service laws by using politics to guide their hiring decisions, picking less-qualified applicants for important nonpolitical positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility, an internal report concluded on Monday.

Eh?

As you may know, journalism is undergoing a bit of a crisis. Decreased revenues and increased competition with bloggers have sunken the industry a bit, and everyone’s trying to figure out how to swim.

Something that’s not helping: Incomprehensible sentences such as the NYT’s lead. Unless you already know a lot about the hiring/firing scandal — and have a few minutes to waste digging through crazy, roundabout prose — you may not make it past the first few lines.

So. What to do.

Let’s see what ProPublica did.

ProPublica is a non-profit online publication that has recently stolen some big-name talent from big-name newspapers. They’re combining old-style investigative journalism with new-fangled technology — and they’re doing a damn good job.

Here’s their lead on the DOJ report:

Today’s Justice Department report is clear and damning: A number of former department officials, including then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff, “committed misconduct” and broke the law in using a political filter to fill non-political positions. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ former right-hand man, and Monica Goodling, formerly the White House liaison at the department, get the brunt of the criticism, and though investigators are clear that the scope of the behavior was wide, they say the most serious impact was on the country’s immigration courts.

Clear. Damning. Broken laws. Political filters. Right-hand men. Serious impacts. Immigration courts.

That is a story people can read.

(And I highly recommend you read it. Highlights:

The report is rich in the code used in e-mails by Goodling and others to connote those deserving of advancement: “on the team” was a favorite (e.g. “loyal to the team,” “a true member of the team,” “completely on the team”), but there’s also simply “like you and me” or the more robust “rock-solid Americans.”

Those on the wrong team usually got a simpler tag. “She’s a D,” says one e-mail. Or in another: “she’s a big D.”

Another:

Twice judges were hired without even being interviewed. The first candidate Sampson suggested for a position as an immigration judge had been a friend of Karl Rove’s since childhood. The candidate was chosen over hundreds of other applicants.

There was, however, one example of a nominee being rejected by EOIR officials. In that case, they objected because of the candidate’s conduct during the interview: he’d “used profanity during the interview, acted abrasively, and when asked what his greatest weakness was, responded ‘Blondes.’”

Ouch.)