Your tax dollars at work

How the hell did I miss this? I guess when you sit at the PC at 5 AM because you have to be out of the house by 7:30 for work, you're not at your sharpest.

First, we paid to bail out AIG. Then we paid to bail out the banks. We can't bail out companies that actually make something, but we can pay for Alberto Gonzales' defense attorney.

Yes, really:

The Justice Department has reportedly agreed to hire a private attorney to represent Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, in a federal lawsuit that accuses him of politicized hiring. It is galling to think that Mr. Gonzales, whose department trampled over the rights of so many people, is having taxpayers pay for private counsel, but it may be appropriate.

What is clearly inappropriate is the department’s refusal to make the arrangement public.

When Justice Department officials are sued in connection with their jobs, they are often represented by lawyers from the department’s civil division. But according to a McClatchy Newspapers report, the department has decided to pay for a private lawyer to represent Mr. Gonzales in a civil lawsuit filed by eight law students. They are accusing Mr. Gonzales and other department officials of discriminating against job applicants who were thought to be liberal.

McClatchy reported that the Justice Department has agreed to pay up to $200 an hour, or $24,000 a month, for Mr. Gonzales’s lawyers. The Justice Department, however, has refused to comment on the arrangements.

We have long wanted Mr. Gonzales to be held accountable for his disastrous tenure as attorney general. His prosecutors brought a series of cases that helped Republicans win elections and hurt Democrats. They put Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant, in jail on spurious charges for four months after she refused to implicate her state’s Democratic governor in a baseless corruption investigation.

Still, Mr. Gonzales is entitled to appropriate legal representation. According to Stephen Gillers, a New York University Law School ethics expert, there are legitimate reasons the government may want him to have a private lawyer. As the case proceeds, for example, Mr. Gonzales and the government might want to stake out different positions on the law or facts of the case.

That does not absolve the department of its obligation to let the public know whether it is paying for a private lawyer, and if so, why it is making these unusual accommodations. It also should let taxpayers know how much they can expect to spend on the former attorney general’s defense.

The next time a Republican squawks about repairing a bridge, or researching depletion of Atlantic cod, or anything else that they like to call "pork", remember how you had to pay so that a corrupt Attorney General could have the best lawyers to defend himself from people seeking justice.