The New York Times’ Charlie Savage has a nice follow-up story on the damning Justice Dept. Inspector General report released Monday on politicized hiring practices. Savage leads with a 2005 email sent by the White House’s office of political affairs to executive branch agencies that identified GOP loyalists the agencies ought to hire.

Indeed, hiring career civil servants at the Justice Dept. was not a problem caused by former Justice White House liaison Monica Goodling or even Alberto Gonzales. It’s been endemic of the Bush administration– from "political briefings" by Karl Rove’s office to the General Services Administration to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson bragging about only handing out HUD contracts to Bush loyalists.

But hasn’t this kind of thing happened in past administrations? Savage reports out that the White House’s concerted, systemic effort to make the bureaucracy GOP-friendly is perhaps unprecedented.-MB

The Washington Post’s Rob Stein at first appears to be writing an unassuming piece about how the House overwhelmingly voted to let the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco products. But in the last few paragraphs, there’s a turn: this is another piece about why the FDA needs more money!

The Bush administration has promised to veto a bill giving the FDA these significant new regulatory powers. Why? Because "it will be too much of a burden for the already overstretched FDA" (the White House makes the equally dubious claim that regulating tobacco will jeopardize trade agreements. With North Carolina?)

Well, it’s not like the Bush administration can do anything about the FDA’s current burden. They surely can’t use their bully pulpit and say they’re totally for the bipartisan consensus in Congress to give the agency more money.

Meanwhile– unless the Senate passes the bill with a veto-proof majority– tobacco will likely go unpoliced until 2009.-MB

President Bush will unveil an executive order today that re-maps the intelligence gathering bureaucracy. The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick reports that the change is mostly to give more power to the Director of National Intelligence, a position just created in 2005. The DNI will not only oversee all 16 intelligence agencies, but will make executive policy, like how to engage intelligence agencies in other countries.

Such heady responsibilities have traditionally fallen to the CIA director. It bears monitoring in the next administration whether Bush’s orders have led to greater clarity or heated bureaucratic resentment.-MB

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has only a few months left on the job, but he’s doing his best to make a mark. The Washington Post’s Josh White obtains a National Defense Strategy memo Gates wrote last month that lays out a comprehensive plan for the Pentagon. Paramount is the need to marshal resources around the war against "violent extremism" beyond fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The memo sounds consistent with previous comments Gates has made about training the military to fight more Iraq-style wars. It also sounds like a slight dig to multibillion-dollar Cold War weapons systems that the Pentagon keeps paying Boeing, et. al to churn out.

The biggest impact the memo might have may simply be the fate of its author. Is Gates, who has won bipartisan praise, positioning to serve in the McCain– or Obama administration?-MB

Understanding Government has taken some time off from writing about how the Food and Drug Administration needs more money. But we’re back on the FDA/more cash beat today thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Alicia Mundy.

Mundy reports on the efforts for broad agency reforms proposed by Sen. Charles Grassely (R-Ia.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mi.). More than just added money, the pair wants additional drug recall powers and, interestingly, to have the agency rein in "Madison Avenue" pharmaceutical company advertising.

While informative, Mundy’s piece inaccurately makes FDA reform sound like a crusade of these two maverick Congressman. In fact, there is fairly broad bipartisan agreement that the agency needs a serious boost.-MB

Since he denied California a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions back in December, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson has emerged as a late-inning villain of Bush administration critics. Now four Democratic Senators from the Environment and Public Works Committee have said that it’s time for Johnson to end his hairsplitting tenure. The Associated Press reports that these Senators say Johnson lied in Congressional testimony when he claimed to act independently in denying California its waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Senators, including Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) the committee chairperson, are the same crew who took a fleeting look at an "unopened" email EPA sent to the White House about the need to regulate greenhouse gases. They appear to have the evidence necessary to confirm their suspicions of a toothless EPA.-MB

After thirty-five years of taking a backseat to industry, the Consumer Product Safety Commission may finally have the resources and legal tools necessary to, um, do something about consumer product safety. Understanding Government will soon be releasing an elephantine report on the agency, but that report has a new twist: a surprisingly strong bill re-authorizing the CPSC.

The Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Trotman reports that the bill establishes a public database of product-related injuries, bans lead and phthalates from children’s toys and establishes mandatory 3rd party toy testing. It also sets stricter standards for ATV vehicles, increases the maximum civil penalty on industry to $15 million and nearly doubles the agency’s budget by 2014.

The President still may veto the bill, but that’s unlikely. It’s a new day at CPSC headquarters in scenic Bethesda, Maryland .-MB

The big executive branch news has been the Inspector General report that the Justice Dept. of Alberto Gonzales unlawfully played politics in hiring career officials. Monica Goodling, and her immediate supervisor in the Attorney General’s office, Kyle Sampson, passed over more qualified candidates for jobs like counterterrorism prosecutor and gave them to GOP loyalists. The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau does a good job laying out the IG’s findings and the future of Goodling and Sampson.

Less clear, though, is the future of the Justice Dept. and other federal agencies. One argument is that the scandal is unique to Bush/Rove/Gonzales and we can take comfort in knowing a comprehensive report has detailed what went wrong. However, the scandal must have something of a chilling effect for those in, or considering joining, the bureaucracy. Why serve your country fighting counterterrorism or making sense of immigration laws if you’re going to be jerked around by the likes of a Monica Goodling?-MB

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin obtains an email showing that the Environmental Protection Agency is not only not letting its managers talk to the press, but also cutting off communications with government auditors. In June, Robbie Farrell, who heads the agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, told employees to route queries to media relations from the Government Accountability Office and EPA’s own office of Inspector General.

It’s one thing for federal agencies to block their employees from talking to the press. But banning talk with government investigators is beyond the pale. An entire book could be written about how Bush’s EPA has picked politics over science. Unfortunately, that book — and related audits — will have to wait until these employees retire.-MB

The New York Times’ Richard Oppel Jr. reports that the Pentagon now admits that U.S. troops killed three Iraqi civilians. The Pentagon originally said the troops were under attack, but, in fact, the Iraqis were just driving to work.

The tragedy could be used by Iraqis as an example of why U.S. troops should no longer be immune to Iraqi national laws. That’s one of the more contentious sticking points as the U.S. extends the deadline– which expires in December– of how long it can stay in Iraq. Currently, the Pentagon will not be held accountable for the deaths beyond promising the Times that "corrective measures" are being taken.-MB