But the DOJ made it abundantly clear that Rove wasn't involved.

Are you saying that they weren't telling the truth?

I'm shocked. Shocked.

//
//BTW, probably time for a new thread on Gonzoles & Attorneygate - this one's waning and may not live any longer than Alberto's tenue as AG.

the same, rather than argue that we should skip the silly preliminary formalities and focus on finishing testing the scaffold.

Karl Rove wants some political hack who's never prosecuted a case in his life to be a USA, that's about the only really shameful thing in this equation. It's nasty and greedy, but gosh, folks, this is about par for the course.

If that's the case, then it's really ironic that this could have been easily accomplished. I don't know if you heard the interview with David Iglesisas on ATC last week, but he was quite upfront in stating that if the Administration had come to him and asked for him to quietly step down he would have. All it would have taken was for Gonzales or Sampson to have said somethig like "It's time for you to step aside and let somebody else have the spot" and he would have faded back into private practice without a peep.

But, that's not how it went down - they accused him of non-performance, he was being fired for "cause". And he squaked. So did the other 7 US Attorneys who were being fired for "cause". This was a blunder on the part of the DOJ, and if you parse Gonzales's presser, it's this blunder that he's apologizing for, not the action itself.

I think we can score this one as an "own goal". And, yes, my side will cheerfully take it at this point.

the leadership in Congress has changed from the period when the Farm Bill and the Patriot Act got passed, and of course the war in Iraq and all the ancillary detritus involving prison camps and torture got started. While it is important to redress past wrongs after due deliberation and investigation by Congress, it is also important to ensure that Bush is in every respect a lame duck by having Congress focus on every fresh outrage that comes to light. We need to do more than just sweep up after GW Bush, we must head him off at the pass and corral him before he does anymore damage.

You misunderstand the situation.

Bush fired 91 of the 93 US Attorneys upon assuming office and the other 2 are long gone now. That's the normal plugging-your-own-guys-in thing.

What happened here, and it's pretty clearly born out by the document dump that has already been made, is that existing Republican U.S. Attorneys were pressured specifically to pursue vote-fraud cases against Democrats--or, in a couple of the cases, other partisan-directed actions--and then fired when they did not do so. This is extremely chilling to other U.S. Attorneys, creating tremendous pressure for all U.S. Attorneys to conduct partisan investigations.

The document dump links the pressure and firings directly to Bush, Rove, and Gonzales.

U.S. Attorneys are typically considered politically untouchable and basically little kings over their demesnes, all in the interest of prosecutorial independence. Prior to the day that these 8 were fired, exactly 3 sitting U.S. Attorneys had been fired mid-term in the last 26 years. And not only do you just not fire them, but politicians just don't call them up and express opinions on which cases they should be prosecuting, when and why. In this case you got the firings plus quite a few calls--one of the things we don't know yet, and may never know, is how many other U.S. Attorneys got one of the calls and never made headlines because they knuckled in.

The principle is that criminal prosecutions are to be conducted by professional prosecutors sworn to the law and not by politicians sworn to an administration or party or ideology. Sure, prosecutors themselves are political beings and are selected as often for their politics as for their expertise, but once they are in the job they are not to be interfered with by the politicians. Prosecutorial independence is called a key factor in whether a society is "ruled by laws, and not by men."

My guess: Gonzales will be gone soon.

“I think Rove and Bolten believe there is the potential for erosion of the president’s credibility on this issue.”

Yeah, there're still several inches of dirt and mud separating the President's credibility from the underlayer of hard rock basalt.

Before his term is up, the President's credibility may be the first tool of man to drill all the way through the Earth's crust and into the mantle.

Why don't you read the Constitution? The rest of us will watch this story unfold. Prosecutor gets too close to GOP corruption? Fire her. Prosecutor refuses to pursue bogus voter fraud claims? Fire him. And who asks for it? I dunno. How about the White House?

The weird thing is, I get that you believe this is simply business as usual. But the American people no longer share your faith in the Bush administration. In fact, they assume the worst about them at the start of any bad news, and then are willing, however grudgingly, to be convinced otherwise.

This is a smart play. And it's applied to the Walter Reed scandal, and it's applied to Scooter, and it's applied to this.

I mean really, citing Olberman? Are you actually one of the couple dozen who comprise his audience?

While he does have a certain animal cunning, the man is a faux intellectual caricature of the fuming BDS winger.

Apparently, your question has already been answered: it seems to have been the chief counsel for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) . Although, apparently without much input from the good Senator (!).

(via TPM Muckraker)

The reason you've gotten all the snark for asking this is that it's a bogus point. US Attorneys are political appointments and it is usual and expected to replace them when an administration changes hands. There was no outcry in 1992 because it was unremarkable. And it was equally unremarkable in 2001 when Bush 43 replaced 91 of the 93 US Attorneys.

See http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2001/March/107ag.htm

and trotting the replacements before the Senate but rather cherry picking which ones to fire enhances the "politically motivated" argument.

Had everyone been fired and the replacements vetted by the Senate, then no issue. Had these eight been vetted by the Senate, then no issue.

Cherry pick eight who have their sights on big-wig GOP-ers?

Issue.

It's part of the routine change of Administration.

Firing USAs mid-term is highly unusual. How many times did Clinton do that? Parroting the Bushbot Talking Points on this issue is just setting yourself up for embarrassment.

And, of course, we're finding out that the crazy liberal conspiracy theory is absolutely true, that the motives behind many of the firings were base. Installing an experienced oppo researcher in Hillary's former home of Arkansas? Deep-freezing the Cunningham/Foggo corruption probe before anyone else got exposed? Punishing USAs who didn't gin up investigations into phony voter fraud scandals? (Washington State's Sec of State in charge of the 2004 election was a Republican, and he got pretty much drummed out of the party for putting correct, lawful performance of his job above loyalty to the GOP Mafia; likewise the local US Atty.) Check, check, check. And don't forget the perjurious statements to Congress.

for one thing, not even the battiest GOP loon ever accused Clinton of "firing" attorneys for purely partisan reasons. More here.

Clinton also failed to pass an "Oklahoma City Patriot Act" giving him the power to short-circuit the nomination process for US Attorneys.

Every Administration discharges the prior U.S. Attorneys upon assuming power as they are all political appointments. Instead of removing Bush's USAs over a period of time, Reno simply sought to start fresh immediately. It was no more nefarious then Bush appointing his own cabinet when he was sworn in. There is no precedent or obligation for a new Adminsitration to keep any former cabinet members or US Attorneys.

getting acquainted with the facts as reported in addition to the talking points before jumping in if I were you. You appear to be the 1st right sider to take the plunge on this thread but perhaps you should have jumped in and not swan dived, that way you might still be wearing your swim shorts?

is the amount of justification the "Bush is EEEEVILLL!!" crowd is going to feel from this.

Small-minded? Mendacious? A partisan hack? Sure. Evil? Not so much.

This is one of the bad ones. Bush's own fingerprints are all over it, Rove's even more so. Also, they are, at the moment at least, going with an "it's OK and it was our right" defense* that is absolutely not going to wash, apparently because they recognized that they have no plausible deniability on this one. Those words are going to be painful to eat but eaten they must be.

*E.g., White House spokesperson Dana Perino said today: “We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion. We stand by the Department of Justice assertion that they identified the seven U.S. attorneys who were removed, as they have said, based on performance and managerial reasons.”

"assertion" - heh

The emails over at TPM look just horrid. These Bushies are such fratboys. " Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote that getting Tim Griffin appointed was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

but if you read through all the TPM coverage, there are Bush and Rove fingerprints everywhere here.

Right this second, I'd give Rove a 50/50 chance of making it to the end of Bush's term. That, of course, could change. The president himself is untouchable here, I'm afraid: even if evidence of behavior sufficiently naughty enough to raise use of the "I" word surfaces,* I think Bush will skate. Impeachment hearings will be seen as payback for the Clinton fiasco, ad Democrats will not want to be seen as indulging in petty vengeance.

*In fairness, I know of no such evidence yet.