It’s Monica Goodling Day on Capitol Hill

We’re already a couple of hours into the House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring testimony from Monica Goodling, the Justice Department’s former White House liaison, who’s there with an immunity agreement. For those die-hard purge-o-philes, you can watch the hearing online here or here, as well catch Christy Hardin Smith’s live-blogging at FDL.

How’s it going so far? We’ve already seen some interesting developments.

* Goodling is throwing McNulty under the bus.

Her first target was Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who has previously suggested that Goodling did not inform him about all the machinations behind the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

“Despite my and others’ best effort, the deputy’s public testimony was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects,” Goolding said. “I believe the deputy was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision.”

Goodling accused McNulty of failing to disclose knowledge of the White House role in the selection of Tim Griffin as the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas. She accused him of inaccurately describing the department’s internal assessment of the Parsky Commission, a committee set up in California to find candidates for political appointments. Then she accused him of failing to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Griffin had been involved in vote caging, a potentially illegal effort to target blacks for voter challenges, during the 2004 campaign.

* Goodling is also throwing Sampson under the bus. Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) asked at what point David Iglesias’ name, for example, was added to the list of prosecutors to be fired. Goodling said she didn’t know. Conyers asked who might be able to answer that question, prompting Goodling to say, “Mr. Sampson is the only person who can tell you at what point he put that name on the list.”

* Goodling indirectly threw the White House under the bus.

In denying her own role in the firings, Goodling pointed a finger at the White House, appearing to suggest that the attorney purge may have arose from a group of select White House advisers: “I have never attended a meeting of the White House Judicial Selection Committee. The attorney general and Kyle Sampson attended those meetings.”

* All of the many reports about Goodling asking wildly inappropriate questions of job applicants to the Justice Department — including questions about political affiliations and details of their personal lives — are true, and Goodling acknowledged as much this morning.

Under questioning from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Goodling admitted that she did block the hiring of an assistant U.S. attorney in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office because she judged him too liberal. “I made a snap judgment and I regret it,” she said. When Sanchez pressed as to how many times Goodling had done this, Goodling said she couldn’t come up with a number, and that she didn’t “feel like there were that many cases.”

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) later pressed her on whether she had committed a crime. “I don’t believe that I intended to commit a crime,” she said at first. Then, when he pressed, “I know I crossed the line of civil service rules.” Did that mean she crossed the line of breaking the law, he asked? “I believe I crossed the line, but I didn’t mean to,” she said.

It’s also worth noting that there were several news items of significance this morning, before Goodling testified, including an informative overview piece from the LAT.

Last fall, after Debra Wong Yang announced that she was leaving her job as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Monica M. Goodling went to work to find a replacement.

Goodling, then the Justice Department’s liaison with the White House, helped organize a series of interviews at the department with candidates for the influential post — much to the surprise of a bipartisan commission in California that had been responsible for screening U.S. attorney candidates in the Golden State.

Goodling’s role in the selection process was reined in after a member of the commission complained to senior officials at the White House and the Justice Department. But the incident, described by a person close to the process, underscores the central role in the U.S. attorneys affair played by Goodling, who is set to testify on Capitol Hill today under a grant of immunity from prosecution.

How a 33-year-old graduate of a little-known law school that teaches courses on the philosophy of punishing and controlling “sin” became such a powerful figure in the Justice Department is a key question for congressional investigators looking into charges that the department has been turned into a political tool of the Republican Party.

Stay tuned.