A disgruntled Justice Department attorney turned conservative blogger writes an unsubstantiated post, and suddenly taxpayers have to pay for a massive, two and a half year long investigation in order to placate Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). At least, that’s one of the biggest takeaways from a more than 250 page report released by the Justice Department’s Inspector General yesterday. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent the Inspector General’s (IG) office on similar goose chases. Neither one of them achieved more than wasted time and money.

An entire chapter of the report stems from a blog post written by J. Christian Adams, a conservative activist hired to work in Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Bush Administration as part of efforts to stack the department with conservative hires. Adams left DOJ, and later went on to represent Tea Party Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

In his post, Adams claims that the division “provided preferential treatment when responding to records requests from civil rights groups or individuals alleged to support ‘liberal’ issues in comparison to requests from Republicans or individuals or organizations alleged to support ‘conservative’ issues,” and the IG spends nearly 30 pages investigating these allegations due to a request from Rep. Wolf. Their conclusion: “Our review did not find any substantiation of ideological favoritism or political interference” in responding to requests for information.

Wolf also joined with Rep. Smith to demand a second investigation into whether the Department behaved improperly in dismissing voter intimidation claims against members of the New Black Panthers Party (NBPP) — a common conspiracy theory touted by Fox News and others on the far right. Despite the fact that an investigation by DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility already concluded that Justice Department attorneys “acted appropriately[] in the exercise of their supervisory duties in connection with the dismissal of the three defendants in the NBPP case,” the IG’s report spends 28 pages reexamining this well-trodden ground. Its conclusion: “we did not find evidence to conclude that the political appointees approved the decision” to dismiss most of the allegations against the NBPP “for improper partisan or racial considerations.”

Sen. Grassley, for his part, demanded an investigation into whether Obama Administration officials engaged in politicized hiring, the IG concludes that hiring decisions were based on entirely appropriate considerations, such as “litigation experience involving voting rights” or “a high degree of academic and professional achievement.” By the end of the report — which also examines DOJ’s conduct during the Bush Administration and comes to far less benign conclusions — the reader is so sick of reading words like “did not find any substantiation” or “no evidence of” applied to allegations against the Obama Justice Department, that the whole report begins to blur together. A few reporters have jumped on a finding that Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez was unaware of who within the Department handled certain parts of the NBPP case when he testified before a Republican-led probe into that matter. But if that’s the worst thing the IG’s office can find during a more than two year long investigation, Perez must have been doing a pretty good job.

So the Civil Rights Division’s current leadership emerges from this investigation largely unscathed, and the three members of Congress that drove much of its content look like petty and credulous. But there is another, more important problem that emerges from this report.

A 250 page report examining years of Justice Department efforts is not something that can be produced overnight. Or over a month. Or over a few months. Literally thousands of hours of work must have gone into this investigation, much of it by attorneys and other professional staff who aren’t exactly cheap to hire — and that’s just counting the people in the IG’s office who conducted the report.

In the course of this investigation, the IG’s office “conducted more than 135 interviews with more than 80 individuals currently or previously employed by the Department,” including interviews with “Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, former Associate Deputy Attorney General (and current Solicitor General) Donald Verrilli, Counsel to the Attorney General Aaron Lewis, Deputy Associate Attorney General Samuel Hirsch, and Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, and former Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King.” All of these well-compensated officials had to stop working on their real jobs in order to accommodate this investigation, not to mention the time they and their staffs spent preparing for those interviews, or the opportunity costs that resulted from this investigation. No administration is perfect and it is likely that there are legitimate concerns that the IG can and should have investigated these past two years, rather than getting bogged down in doubtful partisan allegations.

At a time when House Republicans claim we must slash food stamps and strip health care from millions of Americans in order to reduce the nation’s deficit, it is impossible to justify the expense of paying those officials of all of that work-time in order to accommodate this wild goose chase.

The Obama administration announced its opposition on Wednesday to a GOP immigration proposal that would add visas for highly skilled workers while actually reducing legal immigration. The House will vote Friday on the bill, which Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced. The measure failed in September when the House voted on it under a suspension of the rules, requiring a two-thirds vote.

Under the guise of trying to expand the number of visas available to international students who earn masters and doctorates in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, mathematics — at U.S. universities, Smith’s bill would cut the Diversity Visa program, which is intended for immigrants from countries that do not already send large numbers of immigrants to the U.S. And any unused STEM visas would disappear, shrinking overall legal immigration into the U.S.

In the White House’s statement of administrative policy against the bill, the administration emphasized its commitment to an immigration reform plan that creates a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the U.S.:

As a part of immigration reform, the Administration strongly supports legislation to attract and retain foreign students who graduate with advanced STEM degrees, to establish a start-up visa for foreign-born entrepreneurs to start businesses and create jobs, and to reform the employment-based immigration system to better meet the needs of the U.S. economy. However, the Administration does not support narrowly tailored proposals that do not meet the President’s long-term objectives with respect to comprehensive immigration reform. [...]

Such an approach must provide for attracting and retaining highly skilled immigrants and uniting Americans with their family members more quickly, as well as other important priorities such as establishing a pathway for undocumented individuals to earn their citizenship, holding employers accountable for breaking the law, and continuing efforts to strengthen the Nation’s robust enforcement system.

In addition to President Obama’s support for comprehensive immigration reform — he said he expects to begin working on a reform bill “very soon after my inauguration” — the Congressional Hispanic Caucus outlined nine principles for a reform bill on Wednesday, including protecting families.

But while Democrats are discussing plans to address what voters say should be included in immigration reform, Republicans are pushing bills that roll back the clock on immigration. Smith’s STEM visa proposal treats immigrants as one-to-one competitors with native workers, and earlier this week, retiring GOP Sens. Jon Kyl (AZ) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) introduced the ACHIEVE Act that fails to provide a clear path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. If Republicans truly wanted to do something about immigration reform during the lame duck session, they would have worked together with Democrats. But their commitment to ideology doomed the effort from the start.

Of all the GOP candidates, Mitt Romney staked out the most extreme immigration positions during the Republican primary. He said his immigration plan would be to make undocumented immigrants “self-deport,” and he vowed to veto the DREAM Act. Since he effectively locked up the nomination, however, Romney tried to distance himself from his earlier hardline stances, and a Republican Party official even tried to claim that Romney is “still deciding what his position on immigration is.”

But Romney is still losing among Latino voters by an enormous (and widening) margin. While Romney has tried to moderate his immigration views from the primary to the general election, his immigration advisers and supporters still include extremely anti-immigrant officials.

KRIS KOBACH

Currently serving as Kansas’ secretary of state, Kobach is the author of harmful state and local anti-immigrant ordinances like those in Arizona, Alabama, and South Carolina. He wrote the vast majority of them as senior counselor to the restrictionist Immigration Reform Law Institute and as a private consultant. He has insisted that Romney wants SB 1070 as a national model, and he doesn’t expect Romney to soften the extreme immigration positions he took during the GOP primary. And following President Obama’s directive to halt deportations for up to 1.4 million young undocumented immigrants, Kobach called the policy “illegal.” Kobach advised Romney’s 2008 campaign on immigration and homeland security, and he returned to that role for the 2012 election after he endorsed the GOP presidential candidate in January. In April, Romney tried to distance himself from Kobach while softening his immigration positions, saying he was a “supporter,” not an “adviser” before conceding that Kobach was still an “informal adviser.”

PETE WILSON

After the former Republican California governor endorsed Romney, the presidential candidate named Wilson honorary California chair of his campaign. In a statement touting the endorsement, Romney said, “I’m honored to have Governor Pete Wilson’s support, because he’s one of California’s most accomplished leaders.” As governor of California, Wilson prominently supported Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot initiative that made unauthorized immigrants ineligible for public services such as health care or public education. California voters approved the measure in 1994, a precursor to Arizona’s SB 1070, before courts declared it unconstitutional in 1997.

RUSSELL PEARCE

The former Arizona Senate president, who was ousted in a recall election, was the architect of Arizona’s infamous SB 1070. He threw his support behind Romney and said that the GOP presidential candidate’s “immigration policy is identical to mine.” And Pearce said Romney “absolutely” called for Arizona’s law to be used as a national “model” because Romney has advocated for self-deportation. “[Self-deportation] is in SB 1070,” Pearce said in April.

JAN BREWER

Citing only Romney’s “pro-business background” and his “political history,” Arizona’s nativist Republican governor endorsed Romney ahead of her state’s primary in February. Brewer is one of the nation’s most anti-immigrant governors, and she signed SB 1070, the first of a wave of anti-immigrant bills authored by Kobach.

RAY WALSER

After President Obama announced the directive to halt deportations for DREAM Act-eligible young adults, Romney refused to say whether or not he would undo the policy. But Walser, a co-chair of Romney’s campaign for issues pertaining to Latin America, said he thought Romney would get rid of it. “My anticipation is that he would probably rescind this directive were he to be elected in November,” he told The Daily Telegraph. He added that the decision would match up with the “very tough” positions Romney had taken on immigration. Walser is a senior policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation who spent 27 years working for the U.S. State Department.

LAMAR SMITH

The Texas Republican, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, became one of Romney’s earliest congressional endorsers in October 2011, choosing to back the former Massachusetts governor over Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Smith has pledged to not hold a hearing on the DREAM Act in his hearing, which Romney vowed to veto.

When Mitt Romney outlined his ideas about immigration policy at a Latino conference in Florida, he endorsed removing the cap on visas for the spouses and children of lawful permanent residents. This measure would allow the more than 300,000 people who are waiting for a family-sponsored green card to skip the years-long wait for a visa under a Romney presidency. “We will exempt from caps the spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents. And we will eliminate other forms of bureaucratic red tape that keep families from being together,” he told the crowd at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference.

This is not a new idea — Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez (NJ) has championed this provision as part of a broader comprehensive immigration reform bill. But, as Menendez pointed out in a statement after Romney’s speech, Republicans have “failed to endorse” the idea of allowing more family visas. “I’ve reached out to Republicans to help me fix our legal immigration system but unfortunately to date, Republicans continue to oppose reforms to our family immigration system,” Menendez said.

Indeed, no Republican co-sponsored Menendez’s immigration proposal that would expand the number of family visas. And when the senator’s office has reached out to Republicans to compromise on the provision Romney mentioned, Republicans rejected the olive branch, a staff member told ThinkProgress.

ThinkProgress reached out to Republicans on the House and Senate Judiciary committees to see if they would support Romney’s proposal. In response, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) said in a statement Romney is “right to recognize that immigration reform needs to be geared towards bolstering our economy and job creation,” but did not comment on the GOP candidate’s visa expansion proposal.

As an Associated Press fact check of Romney’s speech points out, Romney would need Congress’ help to expand the limit if he were president. But after failing to support legislative attempts to increase the limit, it’s unlikely Republicans will jump on board now simply because Romney has suggested it.