Mike the Usurper wrote:
For one reason, it's a place the Democrats can stake out a clear opposition position. It's hard for them to even say "withdrawl" and getting them to agree on a version of that or what is done after that is sort of like herding cats. Agreement on the US Attorneys mess is easy.
Second, they have something that is really interesting here. As came out at the press meeting, the White House is in a very ugly corner, and it's one of their own making. On the one hand they want to claim executive privilege about the decisions made on this issue. On the other, they have been making public statements that W was not informed about any of this. That's a very tricky box. They can't claim privilege on something that was not discussed with W, but they can't very well let these guys go to the floor and have to say "These people were fired because they were prosecuting our buddies."
Third, this is a subject that has traction with likely voters. These guys were trying to turn Justice into the right hand of the party? That will get the left going even more ballistic, the middle (what's left of it) going against the administration in a hurry, and fracture off the "get government out of my space" wing of their own party.
Fourth, it's a way to cut out even more of the political machinery. This is more than enough to take down Alberto, and might be enough to take down Turd Blossom with him. Even if Rove stays, it weakens the hand being played by W even more.
It's a fight they can win, and win going away. At that point they stop looking like loser Democrats and can maybe start running with other balls that need to be moved downfield, like the wiretaps, like the Iraq war, like botching Afghanistan, like bungling Katrina, like torture and extraordinary renditions for that purpose. As Newton put it, an object at rest tends to remain at rest, an object in motion tends to remain in motion.
I'm not happy with the Democrats at the moment, but I'll take this as a first step.
These are all very good points. And one thing that didn't occur to me is that the main thing isn't the firing itself, its the lying about the firing. Here's a great article by Cohen that gives that statutory basis I was looking for.
All the same, I'm not so sure that the attys shouldn't have sued so the judiciary could handle it and the legislature just harp on it (and possible repeal certain patriot act provisions.)
