how about a profile of Scott Bloch, the head of OSC:

From tbogg -

And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

Bush administration lunatics and incompetents aren't limited to the cabinet. Nope, they run deep and generally unseen like termites destroying from within. Take Scott Bloch, director of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), for example. Here's what the OSC is charged with:

OSC’s primary mission is to safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing. For a description of prohibited personnel practices (PPPs), click on the prohibited personnel practices link.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Mr. Bloch on December 9, 2003. On January 5, 2004, he was sworn in to serve a five-year term. So...how's he doing? I guess that depends:

MORE THAN A THOUSAND WHISTLEBLOWER CASES DUMPED — Special Counsel Dismisses Hundreds of Disclosures and Complaints in Past Year

Washington, DC — The U.S. Special Counsel has dismissed more than 1,000 whistleblower cases in the past year, according to a letter from the Bush-appointed Special Counsel released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The Special Counsel appears to have taken action in very few, if any, of these cases and has yet to represent a single whistleblower in an employment case.

In a letter dated February 14, 2005 and addressed to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), Special Counsel Scott Bloch defends his stormy 13 months in office by pointing to a sharp drop in backlogged whistleblower cases.

“Everyone agrees that backlogs and delays are bad but they are not as bad as simply dumping the cases altogether,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that this letter is the first account that Bloch has released of his tenure and that his office’s report for FY 2004, which ended in October, is overdue. “If the Office of Special Counsel under Scott Bloch is not helping whistleblowers then there is no reason for the office to continue to exist.”

According to the figures released by Bloch, in the past year the Office of Special Counsel—

Dismissed or otherwise disposed of 600 whistleblower disclosures where civil servants have reported waste, fraud, threats to public safety and violations of law. Bloch has yet to announce a single case where he has ordered an investigation into the employee’s charges. Bloch says that 100 disclosures are still pending; and

Made 470 claims of retaliation disappear. In not one of these cases did Bloch’s office affirmatively represent a whistleblower to obtain relief before the civil service court system, called the Merit Systems Protection Board. Bloch says that another 30 retaliation cases remain in the backlog.
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http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2005/02/and-then-nothing-turned-itself-inside.html

From corriente -

Bush's next line of defense on gwb43.com, "missing" email, attorney firings, Rovian ratfucking: "We'll investigate ourselves"
Submitted by lambert on Tue, 2007-04-24 11:12.

Great news! The guy Bush has tapped to investigate Karl Rove is a crony-hiring, gay-hating, sex predator-friendly adjunct Professor who’s gutted his department and hired Christianists just of out of law school to replace the professsionals!

In other words, the guy’s a “loyal Bushie.”

Anyhow:

The obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

So who’s heading the investigation?

“We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. “We will not leave any stone unturned.”

So, who is Scott J. Bloch? I’m glad you asked:

Besides being the Justice contact for the Office of Faith [SIC] Based Pork Initiatives, he’s obviously a “loyal Bushie.” Bloch has all the earmarks of the species:

Scott J. Bloch hires cronies:

U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who is responsible for enforcing civil service rules, hired his son’s former Catholic boarding school headmaster as an expert consultant, in apparent violation of civil service rules, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In addition, Bloch gave the ex-headmaster a one-year appointment under which he would be entitled to receive as much as $111,966.40 but the only work produced was a four-page memo.

On March 16, 2004, Bloch hired Alan Hicks, a former headmaster of St. Gregory’s Academy, a Catholic boarding school, who left in the wake of allegations concerning priests sexually preying on young student [“sleeping sickness”], to serve as a consultant for a one-year period. Hicks was paid at an hourly rate of $53.83 for work not to exceed 2080 hours but Bloch has refused to divulge the total amount Hicks received.
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http://tinyurl.com/2xy59r

At this late date of Junior's tenure, the notion that there is someone remaining in government who is neither a Cheney/Rove appointee or a political attack dog and who cleaves to a "higher standard" is simply risible. Enough of Scott Bloch and the OSC.

_{“les Etats-unis, c’est le seul pays à être passé de la préhistoire à la décadence sans jamais connaitre la civilisation…”...Georges Clemenceau}

Mother Jones, By Daniel Schulman, April 24

It looked as if Leroy Smith was going to get some recognition after all. A safety manager at a federal prison in California, he had challenged his bosses, risked his job, and endured threats of retaliation to expose hazardous conditions in a prison computer recycling program where inmates were smashing monitors with hammers, unleashing clouds of toxic metals. Now the federal government was flying him to Washington, D.C., as a whistleblowing hero. The Office of Special Counsel (osc), the federal agency charged with protecting government employees who expose waste, fraud, and abuse, had scheduled a catered event honoring Smith as "Public Servant of the Year." The office's director, Scott Bloch, had prepared a flowery speech that was later posted on the agency's website, referencing Sophocles and The Shawshank Redemption: "In the end, Morgan Freeman's character truly becomes what his name implies—a Free man," it read. "One person can root out corruption and abuse of power. Once he understands this, he is redeemed and can break out of the trap of fear, and break free into the light of integrity and justice. That is the effect of seeing a brave whistleblower stand up and win; it inspires the rest of us."

Only Bloch never delivered that speech. Just minutes before the September 7 ceremony was to begin, Smith received word that the event was off because a relative of an osc staffer had died. It seemed "kind of fishy" to Smith; indeed, an osc source told me the excuse was so transparent as to be "ludicrous." The real problem, the source said, was that Bloch—a Bush appointee who, employees say, shares his boss' antipathy for dissent—had learned that Smith was planning to speak at a press conference sponsored by the whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (peer), a persistent critic of the osc. The peer event went forward as planned, and at it Smith told the press that he felt the osc "bears some examination." True, he had been vindicated, but many of his colleagues who'd made similar disclosures had been ignored, and the prison conditions had not changed. "I cannot help but feel that my experience is a beacon of false hope for public servants who are trying to correct wrongdoing," he said.

_{"Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity."}