Last week we wrote about Lane McCotter, the former Texas and Utah prison chief whom Ashcroft picked to head up Abu Ghraib. The Houston Chronicle keeps the story alive, and says New York Senator Charles Schumer is asking Ashcroft for an investigation into how McCotter, who also headed up the Texas prison system during a "bad period" and some private prisons, got the job.

A civilian charged with preparing Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison for U.S. military use headed the Texas prison system during one of its most controversial periods and later resigned as director of Utah prisons after an inmate died while shackled naked to a chair....McCotter spent 18 months administering the Texas system, a period when prison violence made frequent headlines and Justice was threatening to fine the state as much as $1,000 a day if it did not make court-ordered improvements in the system.

....Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, is urging Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate how civilians such as McCotter were chosen to oversee the opening of prisons in Iraq -- noting that McCotter is an executive for a company operating a private prison in New Mexico that the Justice Department criticized last year for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates.

If Ashcroft and the Justice Department were responsible for McCotter's selection, why isn't Schumer calling for an independent investigation by persons outside DOJ?

Schumer wants to know how someone with McCotter's "checkered record" was appointed to the team Ashcroft dispatched to Iraq to help rebuild its judicial system. "There are many questions begging for answers," Schumer said last week. "Mr. McCotter 's selection also raises serious questions about the role that was played by civilian advisers in setting prison policies, designing training programs for prison guards and directly influencing the environment in which the horrible abuses at Abu Ghraib took place."