Hijexx wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:

What was seen here was unprecedented. These are W's appointments, fired for what look to be purely political reasons. To find something comparable, check the histories of Tammany Hall, or maybe Boston or Chicago in the bad old days. The only other similar modern circumstance that comes to mind is Archibald Cox and the Saturday Night Massacre.

(Again, still with no political axe to grind, I want to see Gonzales out as well...)

So it raises no eyebrows if an incoming President clears house, but it's cause for concern if they change up the mix during their term? It can be argued that the traditional reset is done for political purposes. I'm failing to see wrongdoing in this particular instance.

If it's the general practice of a President being able to hire and fire attorneys "at his pleasure" that we want to change, we should change it. If we want "a government of laws not of men" (paraphrasing Cox) why do we allow one individual so much reign over attorney selection?

This problem goes back decades. See Truman's firing of US attorney Maurice Milligan US AG Francis Biddle. I think it's safe to say that was for purely political reasons. Any reasonable person would have to say that was an abuse of power. Not to say that's an excuse for today's conduct, but to illustrate that there is precedent in a bi-partisan manner of this abuse.

If there is a law that prohibits this conduct though, I'm in error about my judgement and this is another nail in the coffin, I'm just unaware of such law.

There are actually multiple issues involved in this one, so some background is important. When the attorneys were removed in December it was said to be as part of a change in direction. That wouldn't be much of a big deal (unprecedented, but something understandable), except they then sent out letter to the fired attorneys basically saying, "if you say anything, it won't go well for you." Bud Cummins, USAttorney in Arkansas took offense at that, and sent an email out to all the other USAttorneys, removed and active, telling them, watch it, these guys are trying to pull some crap. At this point, the fired attorneys have now been fired for "performance issues" which is exactly what Cummins had been threatened with.

So we start cutting ahead in this, the attorneys have absolutely no performance issues noted in their records. For example, the reason cited for firing Carol Lam of Southern California was a lack of immigration cases. Her immigration record was marked as examplary just a few months earlier, but at the time, she was busy sending US Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham to jail for taking bribes, had a second congressman in her sights, had lined up the #3 guy at CIA for some target practice, all for taking bribes, when she was fired. That's one example.

Iglesias, over in New Mexico, was being pressured by the Republican Senator and Representative about sealed documents, i.e. shit they have no business asking about at all, and a possible voter fraud issue to throw at the Democratic opponent. There wasn't one, but that got passed up the line to Rove/Bush whereupon it came back down the pipe at justice to Fredo, and Iglesias is out of a job.

Bud Cummins got replaced by Tim Griffin, someone with basically no prosecutorial experience at all, who had worked as a gofers under Cummins until he got brought to the White House to work for Rove. Rove's assistant is now the USAttorney for Arkansas coming up on an election where the front runner is Hillary Clinton, formerly of Arkansas? There might not be anything there, but this is Karl Rove we're talking about, the fact that there's smoke at all means the fire is probably already out of control.

Then there's the mess in Wisconsin which has basically destroyed people's lives. See also here and here which was a case so bad the appeals judge simple threw the case out because the state had no evidence.

This is not isolated. The same things happened in Washington state after the 2004 governor's race was as close as it was, there is the current state of affairs in Minnesota where the grad of Robertson U who is up there has so angered the career staff her department heads all demoted themselves rather than deal with her anymore (noted here which is now a dead link because it's a TV news site and they don't archive for anything).

What we're seeing here is misconduct at every level. On the firings we can point at the Lam case and see obvious Obstruction of Justice. In the Iglesias case we see influence peddling. In the Thompson case in Wisconsin, presecutorial misconduct with the purpose of throwing the election. That's why *I* have a problem with this.

On to the example you give for Francis Biddle, no that is not the same as what we're talking about. Biddle was Roosevelt's AG. Truman changing him is no more different than LBJ bringing in Nick Katzenbach to replace RFK at the job, or George HW bush replacing George Shultz with Jim Baker at State. You have a change in administration and there will be changes because of that. In this case, there was no change or administration, they just seem to have been honest in their jobs.

RE: Alberto R. Gonzales - Nothing Improper - washingtonpost.com