Well, Duh

The Washington Post reports that Monica Goodling was--surprise--hiring only Republicans:

The Justice Department has launched an internal investigation into whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's former White House liaison illegally took party affiliation into account in hiring career federal prosecutors, officials said yesterday.

The allegations against Monica M. Goodling represent a potential violation of federal law and signal that a joint probe begun in March by the department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility has expanded beyond the controversial dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Did anyone have any doubt that she was doing this, even before reading this?

But the thing is, I'm convinced that Goodling had no idea it was wrong to make party affiliation a condition of hiring. Therein lay her usefulness. If you know something is illegal, you get someone to do it who doesn't know. As ever, it's all about the plausible deniability: clueless apparatchiks Goodling and Sampson carried out Rove's orders, insulating him from the repercussions of their illegality.

Incidentally, Josh Marshall notes that this investigation could nullify the immunity offer from Congress, which would keep them from forcing her to testify. Is it a bug or a feature? An unfortunate side effect of the DOJ investigation, or the point of the thing?

More insulation.