It is the policy of the Department of Justice to seek to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status, political affiliation, age, or physical or mental handicap in employment within the Department and to assure equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment.

- DOJ official policy on nondiscrimination

...the Screening Committee inappropriately used political and ideological considerations to deselect many candidates.

- Today's DOJ official report on the politicization of the Justice Department's hiring practices

We have a problem.

Today in the headlines I read again Hillary's statement that picking a president should be considered a hiring decision.

I completely agree with her!  If everyone gave as much thought into hiring a president as they do an employee, then we wouldn't have ended up with George W. Bush for 8 years, for sure!  He was definitely the most inept of the final candidates.

HOWEVER, Hillary is forgetting one important thing:  it is illegal to consider race and sex when making hiring decisions, and that's exactly what she's encouraged the public tod o.

The Bush Administration's stunning managerial incompetence (at least on anything remotely related to effective governance) seems so broad and deep that it raises its own research questions:

1. Is it possible for such massive incompetence to arise in a natural manner?

2. Why do incompetents hire so many other incompetents? Why don't they mask their weakness by hiring competent people to cover for them?

Yes, Virginia, there is a science to incompetence. Like any other natural phenomenon, scientists can study it - and they have discovered a few interesting things about the way that incompetence actually works. Follow over the fold for the deeper truths.

I am not sure this is an appropriate topic here, but I need to hire some freelance editor for a short term project and I would love to be able to find great candidates who are "liberals".

I would like to spend my money on people who share my convictions, and try to "keep it in the family" by supporting those who I think are fighting the good fight.

But maybe this is not appropriate when hiring, it gets to close to discriminating against people for their political beliefs.

Since I use elance.com to outsource this kind of piece work on an ad hoc basis already, it just seemed a shame I couldn't direct my investment to people in the progressive community.

So could a site like hiringliberally.com work?  If I made such a site, it would be free for both job seekers and employers.  As an employer, I can tell you that all other sites in this sector charge the employers a hefty sum for small businesses like mine.