In today's Washington Post, Ruth Marcus profiles several of the current crop of scoundrels in the Bush administration who "illustrate the administration's fox-guarding-the-henhouse personnel plan, the disdain of its appointees for the laws they are sworn to enforce and their spoils-of-war attitude toward the government they are entrusted with overseeing."  Several of her profiles also appear in CREW's "Criminal & Scoundrels:  the 25 Most Corrupt Officials of the Bush Administration."  A couple on the Post's list didn't make CREW's list this year.  Here are a few examples:

· The Interior Department inspector general reported that Julie MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but who has no academic background in biology, overrode the recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species. MacDonald also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that lobby for weakened environmental protections, not to mention an online gaming buddy, the IG found.

An Interior lawyer called MacDonald's involvement in one endangered species matter "the most brazen case of political meddling" he had seen in more than 20 years in government. Nor, it seems, is such politicization limited to MacDonald. "Policy trumps science within the Assistant Secretary's corridor on many occasions," another department lawyer told the IG.

· J. Steven Griles, a coal lobbyist who became the No. 2 official at the Interior Department (in other words, his job description didn't much change), pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship with lobbyist/felon Jack Abramoff. Griles's then-girlfriend introduced him to Abramoff and ran a lobbying group that received $500,000 in Abramoff-generated funds; in turn, Abramoff sought and received Griles's help on client matters.

· Griles's new significant other, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who helped him fend off ethics charges when they both worked at Interior, resigned as head of the Justice Department's environmental section. Wooldridge and Griles bought a $1 million beach house with the top lobbyist for the oil company ConocoPhillips; then Wooldridge -- supposedly with the blessing of ethics officials -- signed off on a move to ease up on anti-pollution requirements imposed on ConocoPhillips as part of a settlement.

· Lurita Doan, a GOP mega-donor turned head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon on agency premises at which Scott Jennings, a top aide to Karl Rove, briefed political appointees on GOP targets for the 2008 election. According to six people present, Doan asked GSA employees how they could "help 'our candidates' in the next elections." Doan, displaying an Alberto Gonzales-like memory, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that she had "absolutely" no recollection of that statement.