In the days after Hurricane Katrina, it became apparent that FEMA chief Michael Brown, who had little to no emergency management experience before joining the administration, was ill prepared to deal with such a crisis. Naturally, one might have thought that this would have changed the hiring practices of the administration, right? Wrong. Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu report for The Washington Post.

The Bush administration is seeking to appoint a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues, prompting sharp criticism from some employee groups, immigration advocates and homeland security experts.

The push to appoint Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, comes in the midst of intense debate over the qualifications of department political appointees involved in the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.

Concerns over Myers, 36, were acute enough at a Senate hearing last week that lawmakers asked the nominee to detail during her testimony her postings and to account for her management experience. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) went so far as to tell Myers that her résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job.

As one former Clinton administration official aptly put it, this move represents a continuation the "pre-Katrina thinking, where political relationships were a very large factor. Post-Katrina, we now see that people need to be eminently qualified."