First, read Part 1 if you haven't already (and that's almost a given, since only four people had responded). Short recap: I'm in the early research stages of writing the definitive history of the Bush regime. As I am neither a journalist nor a professional researcher - although I have some skills from college - this process has involved constant discovery of new resources, practices, and efficiencies. And necessarily so, since the task is growing in size and complexity the more I know about it.
Most significantly, I've just run across the fact that the Library of Congress has a legislative search engine called Thomas with which you can see all nominations submitted to the Senate over an arbitrary span of time. I, quite justifiably, feel like a schmuck because of this: I've used Thomas before without really marking it in memory, so it had simply never occurred to me to use it for this, so I'd been going to the archives of each individual department trying to tease out their Bush appointments.
In fact, I had been taking such a roundabout way that I was still working through the State Department - the exact place I started with - and kept running into frustrating blank walls; entire bureaus whose archived leadership history ended in like 1998, but without any Googled website giving a clue as to who had been in them since then. I've been triangulating Wikipedia lists with two State Department archives cached from different years, but even then there are giant, gaping holes in the record. I don't have the money for FOIA requests, so anything that is not somewhere on the internet will not be part of my initial research.
So far, I had collected somewhere in the area of a thousand names of Bush appointees from the State Department alone, doing thorough Google canvasses to get their full names - and believe me, some of them are just plain hilarious. You'll see what I'm talking about when I finish the whole list and post it here, though it will probably have to be done in parts because of the sheer number likely involved.
Anyway, noting that I was approaching four digits from the State Department alone, I was both dreading and relishing (for the sake of adventure) all the other Departments I'd have to safari through to dig up their Bush appointees. Transportation, Commerce, Justice, Defense, Interior, Energy, on and on - not to mention all the little independent agencies, advisory councils, regulatory bodies, etc. etc.
So even though it would take forever, I was choosing to see it as a great expedition full of weird characters, friendly villagers, and hostile barbarians along the way. You wouldn't believe how much fun it can be cross-referencing people and finding out obscure little details about them: The official archive may say (hypothetically) "Tony Loomis," but then you look him up on Wikipedia and it says "Tony A. Loomis"; then you look him up on NNDB and it says "Tony Arthur Loomis; then you dig deeper and find "Anthony Arthur Loomis"; and finally, you run into some record somewhere that gives him as "Irving Anthony Arthur "Tony" Loomis, III" and it's like you're a kid on a scavenger hunt and you've just found something shiny.
That's just one of the small, mundane rewards of this kind of research. Another is seeing pictures of some of these people, and boy oh boy are there some freakish C.H.U.D.s in the mix. And I don't mean to act like that means anything in and of itself, but when you run into a guy who's a bona fide fascist nutjob and looks the part, it's just too precious for words. Tell me this isn't the creepiest motherfucker you've ever seen, once you read his background (CIA Directorate of Ops, gun-running to fascist insurgents, Blackwater executive).
Of course, not all of them are creeps. Some of them are just plain funny-looking weirdos, and there tend to be a lot of those among the people Bush appointed in exchange for campaign donations. They look freaking inbred, or double-Y chromosome. All these scummy, greasy Texas businessmen with soulless fish-eyes and stupid grins, it's hilarious.
But getting back to my point, now I have the LOC's Thomas, so I can radically cut down on some of the time involved - at least in searching for nominations that required Senate approval. This has the added benefit of including nominees whom the Senate failed to act on, filibustered, or who withdrew due to some scandal or other. But it will be every bit as much of a bastard compiling all the miscellaneous appointees who didn't require approval, since I basically have to just map out the Executive branch and find all the little corners where offices like that are.
I really want this to be comprehensive, because I want the total picture before I start tracing out a narrative. And besides, I really want to give a complete list of Bush appointees to the Daily Kos community: There is no such list online that I've been able to find (the Thomas nominee lists include entry-level military and foreign service officer commissions, so I still have to hack through quite a thicket to get the pertinent information), so I know once I've got it I'll be contributing a resource that isn't there yet, and that fellow internet researchers and activists may find useful.