Why do people insist on criticizing Bush over anything regardless of the importance of the issue? This issue carries all the import of a nocturnal emission.

One of the latest examples adduced of President Bush’s tendency to appoint ideologically agreeable hacks rather than traditionally-qualified people to the administration ...

I personally question the value of "traditionally-qualified people", who have so mis served and mis-used their positions in the recent past.

it's that a student at Regent is unlikely to encounter many people with a differing world view let alone engage in vigorous debate with them. This insularity in and of itself makes for a mediocre legal education. And a tendency towards engaging in "goupthink".

Wow - maybe you need to make a visit to Harvard Square if you want to see some "goupthink".

If my use of two syllable words is too much for you, I apologize. Or, should I say, I'm sorry. Um, my bad.

And you suffer academic biases from having a PhD? I have to think it is more from using silly words. Did you get beat up a lot in grade school? High school? College?

From now on I will try and do a better job of "adducing" things about the Bush administration, even though I don't have a PhD.

Not all of the 3,000 plus would be considered political appointees. Most of them are actually schedule C employees which is a form of political patronage. No one expects the patronage jobs to be elite. They are usually the idiot children of big donors (Monica Lewinsky, anyone?).

If it's elitism of pedigree, it's somewhat problematic because it excludes highly competent candidates without degrees from those institutions.

Listen, James, enough of the anti-Bush rhetoric, please!

By the way, 150 represents two entire classes of Regent grads who pass the bar, meaning that the Bush administration is by far the largest employer of Regent alumni. Which, combined with the fact that the school has only been accredited for 10 years, means that these people are coming into the Department of Justice with essentially zero experience.

That said, if any school--even an elite one--accounts for 5% of political appointees that seems rather high, given that there are hundreds of accredited law schools in America (and thousands of undergraduate institutions). And there are strong philosophical arguments for having a bureaucracy staffed and headed by more than a few select universities (which is one of the fundamental problems of continental governments, most notably that of France).

If it's elitism of pedigree, it's somewhat problematic because it excludes highly competent candidates without degrees from those institutions.

religious affiliation is now highly correlated with the likelihood of landing a position in a federal agency

Well, only at the appointee level. It simply doesn't come up in the civil service hiring system. One presumes that the Clinton administration hired very few from Regents, Liberty, and the like. And one can't blame them for taking the obvious signaling on face value.