Yet another Distraction

The Democrats know this, the MSM knows this, even the Administration knows this. The Dems are simply beating the grass and hoping that a snake comes out. The travesty of this "scandal" is that Gonzales, fell for the trap and spoke, saying that "mistakes were made” was the dumbest thing he could ever have done, it’s another example of the Admin allowing the opposition party to define the terms of the fight. I had hoped for better from the Admin but I was disappointed once again.

Gee, and NPR this morning mentioned that Clinton fired 1 (one) US Attorney. Always good to keep abreast of what lies the MSM is spreading.

The difference is - Clinton fired 93 US Attorneys at the beginning of his term. Those replacements were subject to Senate confirmation. When NPR was talking about Clinton firing one, that was in the middle of the US Attorney's term and the replacement was ratified by the Senate. These US Attorneys were fired AFTER a staffer for Arlen Spector inserted a provision in the re-authorization of the PATRIOT Act (that Spector didn't know about, BTW) that provided for replacement of US Attorneys mid-term WITHOUT Senate confirmation. So then, using this new PATRIOT Act, the administration fired US Attorneys who wouldn't play ball and indict Democrats before the election (as the US Attorney from New Mexico testified to Congress) or were investigating Republicans too hard (on May 11th, the same day that Carol Lam opened an investigation into corruption charges against Congressman Jerry Lewis, a high level figure in Justice sent an e-mail to the Attorney General COS saying that they needed to discuss a serious problem with Carol Lam over the phone). Not only that, but the Attorney General testified in front of Congress on 18 Jan saying that he would never replace a US Attorney for political reasons, yet an e-mail in December to White House Council Harriet Miers said:

"We're a go for the US Atty plan," Kelley wrote in a Dec. 4, 2006, e-mail to Sampson and Miers. "WH leg, political, communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes."

Facts boys, stick to them.

And what were President Clinton's reasons for the firings? Were they any less politically motivated? Are these not political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President?

No one is saying that they don't serve at the pleasure of the President. And of course Clinton fired all of them because they were leftovers from the previous Republican administration. The core of the case revolves around several things - 1)That these firings took place after a sneaky move by a staffer at the request of the Justice Department, 2) that Gonzales has obviously perjured himself in front of the Judiciary Comittee with regard to the nature of the firings and, 3) none of the firings were terrorism related, yet they used the PATRIOT Act as the authority to do it. This looks like a blatent attempt to make those replacements without the advice and consent of the Senate. It looks bad, it smells bad, it probably IS bad. Not only that, but a US Attorney (a Bush appointee and the model for Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, BTW) testified in front of the Judicial Committee that he felt "threatened" by phone calls from Senator Domenici because he didn't find the dirt on New Mexico Democrats that he was supposed to find regarding voter fraud and refused to indict before the election. As for the measure inserted into the Patriot Act that allowed this circumvention of the Senate? Arlen Spector supports changing the law back to the way it was:

According to the original law, the Attorney General could appoint interim U.S. Attorneys, but if they were not nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate within 120 days of being appointed, the federal district court would appoint a replacement. Justice Department officials apparently didn't like that judges were able to appoint U.S. Attorneys, members of the executive branch, so the new language removed the court's involvement in the process. But in doing that, the change also allowed the administration to handpick replacements and keep them there in perpetuity.

In essence, this law would allow the President to nominate strawmen, get them confirmed and then fire and replace them in contravention Article II Section 2 of the Constitution. That is why this is a big deal.

Even better, from an online chat at the Washington Post today with the Acting Attorney General at the start of the Clinton administration and chief of the Department of Justice's Civil Division from 1989 to 1993 (I.E. a Bush appointee).

The "Democratic" response to the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is that these actions were political. The "Republican" response is that the Clinton Administration fired all but one U.S. Attorney at the beginning of the Clinton Administration -- so of course, it is all political. What is the difference between these mid-Presidency firings and cleaning house at the beginning of a Presidency, if any?

Stuart M. Gerson: There is a difference, but I do not find it to be an important or material one. It is customary for a President to replace U.S. Attorneys at the beginning of a term. Ronald Reagan replaced every sitting U.S. Attorney when he appointed his first Attorney General. President Clinton, acting through me as Acting AG, did the same thing, even with few permanent candidates in mind. What is unusual about the current situation is that it happened in the middle of a term. However, all of the incumbents had served more than the four years presumed in their original commission and, I suggest, replacing them is entirely the prerogative of the executive, as each deposed U.S. Attorney has agreed. The personel practices employed, giving inaccurate reasons for terminating them and not giving them the courtesy of notice, are, as the AG now concedes, unacceptable.

Facts boys, stick to them.

Uh huh.

These US Attorneys were fired AFTER a staffer for Arlen Spector inserted a provision in the re-authorization of the PATRIOT Act (that Spector didn't know about, BTW) that provided for replacement of US Attorneys mid-term WITHOUT Senate confirmation. So then, using this new PATRIOT Act, the administration fired US Attorneys who wouldn't play ball and indict Democrats before the election (as the US Attorney from New Mexico testified to Congress) or were investigating Republicans too hard

You seem to have facts confused with insinuations. Fact is that the President has the authority to do what he did. Fact is that Congress approved confirmation of PATRIOT. Fact is that the Dems' response is entirely consistent with the paranoid ravings we've heard since the President was first campaigning.

Ah Scooby...you poor thing.

To see what is in front of your nose is a constant struggle.
- George Orwell.

If you can't connect the dots, I'm not going to do it for you...

Scooby - Nobody is saying that the President didn't have the authority to do what he did. Nobody is saying that Congress didn't re-authorize the Patriot Act. So now that we got those two strawmen out of the way, let's knock down a third straw man -

Republican Senator John Ensign

was flabbergasted when I first heard this. I cannot tell you — I’m not a person who raises his voice very often. My staff could hear the frustration that I expressed to Paul McNulty when he first informed me that not a single conversation had been had between him or any of the previous deputy attorney generals with Dan as far his priorities were concerned.

[…]

The bottom line in all of this is the relieving of duties of Dan Bogden, however you want to describe it, was completely mishandled by the U.S. Attorney General.

[…]

The deputy attorney general — in the conversations that I had — he was either ill-informed about the whole process or [he] intentionally misled. One of the two.

[…]

Everybody who’s appointed by the White House understands that they serve at the pleasure of the President. But that does not mean — a good leader does not just dismiss someone for no good reason, especially if you haven’t done your job in the first place. And I don’t believe the U.S. Attorney General’s office did their job in the first place.

Republican Senator John Sununu on Fox News:

"I think the president should replace him," Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think the attorney general should be fired."
...Sununu said the firings of the prosecutors, together with a report last Friday by the Justice Department's inspector general criticizing the administration's use of secret national security letters to obtain personal records in terrorism probes, shattered his confidence in Gonzales.

"We need to have a strong, credible attorney general that has the confidence of Congress and the American people," said Sununu, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year. "Alberto Gonzales can't fill that role."

And finally, even Arlen Specter, ranking Republican on the Judicial committee wants to redo the Patriot Act to take the provision out. Like Orwell said...

hey ctil, did you blogroll us on your Kos page as "wingnut extreme?"

Cause that's freakin' hilarious man.

What's the standard for wingnut'itude over there anyway? The bar seems kinda low.

Bush fired every attorney general when he took office. That is normal. To fire 8 attorney generals in the middle of an administration, Republicans that had been appointed 5 years ago, and lie about who was doing the firings and why is a coverup.

This was political. All of those fired were doing something, or not doing something, that local GOP officials objected to. The problem is that Justice attorneys are not supposed to be blatently political. Something about the rule of law you know.

I admit that I'm ignorant about this stuff....maybe I'll ask Army Lawyer or Eagle1.

But, that said, my understanding of US attorney position was that it's a political position, and that "the eight" were politically removed.

That seems normal enough to me, the only argument that I'm really getting to the contrary is that "well this has never been done before."

Okay fine. But what was the illegal act here?