An e-mail from a D.C. lawyer-politico who has read the new report:

Inspector General Glen Fine has published his second report on alleged politicking at the Department of Justice. This one is 140 pages long and loaded with silly footnotes and minutiae about what websites Monica Goodling and others looked at when reviewing applicants for various jobs. Bottom line — as was the case with the prior IG report, the investigators could find no evidence that former Attorney General Gonzales or his predecessor John Ashcroft knew about or sanctioned any improper political hiring. Schumer and Leahy must be devastated. The report does suggest that Monica Goodling and former DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson used improper political criteria to hire a few immigration judges, but a fair reading of the report suggests that this was due to a mistaken understanding on their parts as to what criteria could be used for judicial appointments. The conclusion that this was a mistake and not part of some elaborate scheme to blackball Democrats is supported by several incidents described in the report where Sampson affirmatively weighed in on hiring decisions on behalf of liberal job applicants. My understanding is that there are several more reports coming, but if the first two are an indicator of things to come, the Dems are going to need to find a fresh scandal to ride into the Fall election season.