What? Cronyism? Here?

Karen Rutzick reports on a more mid-level manifestation of the corruption and cronyism run rampant in Bush's Washington:

In April, the national nonprofit advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility raised the alarm on McGinley, an attorney at the Office of Special Counsel, accusing her of burrowing in.

Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, an appointee, hired McGinley as principal special assistant, a political appointment, when he came to the agency in January 2004. Later, he moved her to another political slot, deputy special counsel, for a brief period before hiring her as a career attorney in the investigation and prosecution division, reporting to a career supervisor. Shortly thereafter, McGinley took a six-month detail at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. Only career employees can receive detail assignments.

PEER is publicizing an anonymous account from an OSC staffer who says that Bloch converted McGinley because he "owed" her. "The top federal officer charged with protecting the merit system [is violating] core merit principles with impunity," says PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "The special counsel is supposed to enforce anti-cronyism rules but, under Scott Bloch, cronyism has become the prime management directive at OSC."

Rutzick goes on to note that there is, naturally enough, another side to the story. It's a story I might even consider believing did not the bad version of the story so perfectly fit the long-established pattern of Republican behavior.