Word: rehnquist
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...political appointees are as well connected as Janet Rehnquist. A former White House staff member for the first President Bush, she's the daughter of Chief Justice William Rehnquist--whose Supreme Court ensured there would be a second President Bush. No surprise that 16 months ago, she got a job as inspector general at the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department. But her connections may be wearing thin. The General Accounting Office (GAO) began an investigation in October into charges that she has mismanaged the office. Among the allegations: that she forced out a number of senior career staff members...
...sources tell TIME, GAO investigators have discovered that documents potentially important to the inquiry have been shredded. The investigators are focusing on the possible destruction of notes, e-mails and memos written by top officials in Rehnquist's office. Rehnquist has denied that anything of significance was shredded, but the discovery prompted Rehnquist's general counsel to pen a Thanksgiving-week e-mail urging HHS staff to stop shredding...
...incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley, has been critical of Rehnquist. But fellow Republican member Orrin Hatch, for whom she once worked, has asked Grassley to be kept "up to speed" on the inquiry. Grassley has only increased the pressure, complaining to her White House sponsors that they need to take the matter seriously, sources say. Translation: Find her another job. --By Michael Weisskopf and Viveca Novak
...Take 15 disgruntled lawyers, scholars and journalists, give them a publishing contract, and stir. The results will look something like "The Rehnquist Court: Judicial Activism on the Right," edited by Herman Schwartz (Hill & Wang; November). Kirkus calls the book a "full-bore, peppery assault on the current Supreme Court...That the court put George W. Bush into the White House is, in these contributors' estimation, but one of its manifold sins, though it's a big one...Contributor address the Court's perceived failings, born of the very judicial activism that so many conservatives denounce...Expect worse, the authors warn...
Unfortunately these sentiments have spilled over from the executive to the judicial branch. The Supreme Court, which under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has often tried to protect states’ rights, ruled last year that medical marijuana patients can be prosecuted by the federal government in California even though by state law they are committing no crime. This ruling was somewhat ironic; it seems that the Supreme Court is concerned with safeguarding states’ rights only when when conservative values are at stake...