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This morning I was listening to NPR and heard a detailed story on the continuing investigation into illegal hiring practices at the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Specifically, the enfant terrible who seemed to be at the center of the hiring fiasco was one Monica Goodling.

Monica Goodling. What a stupid, naive, misinformed, ignorant little troll she was (and is, for all I know). Ms. Goodling received her law degree from Regent University (Pat Robertson’s college), where the law school’s mission is to “use the legal profession to enact the will of God” or some such tripe. The Washington Post has a pretty thorough summary of all the asinine, bone-headed things she did on the behalf of her radical right-wing mentors. A few highlights:

Thirty-four candidates told investigators that Goodling or one of her deputies raised the topic of abortion in job interviews and 21 said they discussed same-sex marriage, the report said. Another job applicant said he admired Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, only to watch Goodling “frown” and respond, “But she’s pro-choice.”

She and her aides regularly gave candidates for career civil service jobs a form designed for political appointees that sought information on party affiliation and financial contributions. When job seekers sometimes raised objections, Goodling replied that the form was a mistake, showing that she was “aware that it was improper,” the report said.

…

Leslie Hagen, an assistant U.S. attorney who according to yesterday’s report was denied at least two positions at the Justice Department because Goodling suspected she was a lesbian, is petitioning current leaders for a “mutually agreeable permanent position,” according to Lisa J. Banks, Hagen’s employment attorney.

In another instance that investigators called “particularly damaging,” Goodling refused to hire an award-winning career prosecutor with nearly two decades of experience for a temporary counterterrorism job in Washington because his wife served as vice chairman of the local Democratic Party and ran local congressional campaigns.

Get all that? I think my favorite is the part where Goodling prevented another woman from getting a promotion because she suspected she was a lesbian.

Are you angry yet? Because these are the kind of people that the Bush administration put into positions of power from top to bottom. People who put politics before country, and duty, and morality. People who feel they are above the law, and entitled to ignore it when it suits them.

So just to balance out the portrait of a woman in a position of power that she doesn’t deserve, and abuses horribly once she’s in it, here’s the complete opposite. Nancy Pelosi is a woman who is accomplished, intelligent, and articulate. She definitely deserves her position as Speaker of the House (I’d argue she deserves better). People like Monica Goodling and her ilk throw around the term “San Francisco values” as some kind of nudging, winking reference to, let’s be honest, gays. Because to them, gays (or lesbians, or bisexual people, or transgendered people) aren’t humans, and the fact that places exist (like San Francisco) where they are afforded all the same human and civil rights as everyone else just really messes up their parochial world view.

In this piece on Huffington Post, Nancy gives another interesting explanation of the use of the term “San Francisco values.” First she talks about what those values really are - things like social and economic justice, equality, environmentalism. Then she talks about why the right-wing hate machine really uses the term “San Francisco values,” and how it helps their true agenda. Please watch the video - Nancy is awesome. Somehow even when she’s talking about the way that right-wing thugs use her name or image in a hateful way, she manages to remain even-tempered and pragmatic.

She puts an empty-headed idiot like Goodling to shame.