Obama to weed out Bush political appointees

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John Berry, President Obama's director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has issued a new directive that is clearly designed to weed out any Bush administration political appointees who ''careered-into'' the civil service. The directive also effectively establishes a partisan political factor in hiring for career civil service positions in the federal bureaucracy.

In other words, if you worked for President Bush in the executive branch at any time during his second term in the White House, you may not be approved. The same applies if you worked for a Republican Member of Congress at any point during the past five years.

Amazingly, even Berry had to acknowledge in his directive that political appointees cannot be barred from career positions because of their political views. The whole point of the career service, after all, is to insure that federal workers are hired on the basis of merit, not their political views.

But by introducing a time factor that may disqualify an individual, Berry effectively creates a semi-covert political factor in the hiring process.

If you are wondering who is John Berry, you can read his official here. Note that he spent a decade handling civil service issues for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

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