Letters to the Editor
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Chuck Schumer has already drawn the outlines of the first two questions that ought to be asked of him
I wonder if he's a better liar than Scooter?
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Prediction
We will get some sanctimonious denials, accusations that the Dems are "politicizing" the issue, but nothing of substance, no evidence to support the denials and no apologies. And everything Gonzo says will turn out to be untrue.
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Let's presume...
...that it is true that within the White House, a group consisting of Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzalez got together, and said, "What should we do about all of our U.S. Attorney appointments in the second term?" And that Harreit Miers said, "Let's replace all of them." And Karl Rove said, "Well, there are some that we like, but some that I have had complaints about." And Gonzalez said, "Let me know who the ones are that you don't like, and why, and I'll look it over and I'll let go the ones that I think should be let go..."
Let's just assume all of that to be true.
Is there anything wrong with that? The Clinton White House, when it arrived on the scene, discharged EVERY Reagan-Bush era U.S. Attorney, not just 5 or 6, and appointed all new ones. Ronald Reagan, I presume, replaced most, but maybe not all, of the Carter-era appointees.
This is our system. The executive branch is responsible for operating the Justice Department. The Executive chooses U.S. Attorneys the way it chooses new federal judgges. Except it is always understood that the U.S. Attorneys are not appointed for life, and that they serve at the pleasure of the President.
I am mostly addressing this to the Salon readers who are also attorneys. Is it not routine, in your understanding, that at the federal level, and in some but not all states, the office of the Attorney General was the responsibility of the executive and a new administration would replace all of the non-career attorneys? JFK made his brother his attorney general. LBJ made Ramsey Clark his attorney general in order to get Clark's dad to retire from the Supreme Court and make way for LBJ to appoint Thurgood Marshall.
I just can't believe that everyone is getting upset about something that is routine.
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sure, that's true, but
Of course all executive branch political appointees can be let go at any time for any reason. The reason why this thing has blown up is that their first reason for doing it was "performance issues" and they claimed it was totally not political. When the attorneys in question complained , and rightly so, that their reputations were being damaged byt the AG's lies about them and their performance people started wondering what the real story was.
As always, it's the "cover up" that gets people into trouble.
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Yeah, Elephant
We'll see if it gets worse, but at least in New Mexico it appears that the US Attorney was fired for not using the office to persecute the political opposition.
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Two questions for Tim Grieve
I agree that it is cheesy to discharge someone for "performance issues" if in fact the real reason is "political and philosophical issues."
All I am saying is this -- even if you think, "Oh that Rove; he just wanted to get some fresh faces into those positions to build up a future bench of Republican politicians including some people who were his favorites," -- if that were TRUE, there's nothing illegal or even all that unusual about it.
So maybe Tim Grieve could answer two quetions:
1. Do you agree with all mainstream Constitutional Law scholars that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, and that large-scale replacements are more or less routine at the beginning of any Presidential terms?
2. What is the specific wrongdoing that you allege in this case. Who committed the wrong and what rule or law did it violate?
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Facts are the soldiers of history - they always obey their generals
"Is there anything wrong with that? The Clinton White House, when it arrived on the scene, discharged EVERY Reagan-Bush era U.S. Attorney, not just 5 or 6, and appointed all new ones. Ronald Reagan, I presume, replaced most, but maybe not all, of the Carter-era appointees."
Yes, when you take the action out of context, you can make it look completely innocuous. The White House merely fired a bunch of US Attourneys whose performance was not satisfactory. Innocuous: every administration does it, right? However, let's add some context to this.
First of all, let's include this administration's well-known and well-publicised habit of appointing officials based not on their experience but on their support of the administration's policies. The most prominent case in point: "Brownie, you're doing one heck of a job." Harriet Miers' nomination for the Supreme Court is another. There are numerous others that I'm too lazy to look up at the moment. In that light, any personnel reshuffling by the White House is suspect by default. After six years of this, it is safe to assume, I think, that if anyone is fired from a position in the Justice Department, it's likely because they're getting in the way of some nasty political game the White House is playing.
Second, this administration is under investigation for a variety of possibly criminal activities. The Scooter Libby conviction is merely the latest and the most prominent. The Jack Abramoff case is, hopefully, still waiting to come home to roost. Remember, one of the attourneys has successfully put Duke Cunningham in jail, and the threads from that particular case lead to Abramoff and from Abramoff radiate all over the place. The sudden firing of eight attourneys, at least one of whom was involved in a criminal investigation connected with the White House is also suspect.
So yeah, people get fired from jobs all the time. That's a fact of life. That's not the point here, Elephantman. The point here is WHY they were fired, and given this administration's record at screwing around with American values (not to mention American Constitutional Law), I think "why" is a valid question.
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Clinton did it...
So it must be right? First of all, ignoring the fact that according to Republicans, EVERYTHING Clinton did was wrong, the point isn't that Clinton did it.
Yes, the prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the President. During the Clinton administration, however, there was no law on the books that allowed the President to nominate the posts WITHOUT SENATE APPROVAL! When the Patriot Act was put in place, it allowed the President to nominate prosecutors without the consent of the Senate. So when you get to firing prosecutors, then nominating them without congressional approval, then you get a completely different animal.
Clinton had no ability to nominate political hatchet men, simply because he knew they would have to pass muster in the Senate. With the Patriot Act on the books, Bush could nominate Karl Rove to be a prosecutor, and the Senate couldn't have a say about it until Bush's term was OVER.
Besides, if Clinton fired prosecutors because they refused to go after Republicans, don't you think we would've heard about it? In the myriad of investigations held during his tenure as president, you don't think we would've found out that his Prosecutors were unfairly targeting republicans or ignoring democrats?
Republicans really have no sense of irony, no sense of decency, and have become shameful apologists for one of the most corrupt and damaging administrations in the history of this country.