Gonzales and the Anklebiters
So, Schummer amd fellow Dems are screaming for Alberto Gonzales to resign because of the firings of 8 U.S. Attorneys.
Yet no one raised an eyebrow when Janet Reno fired all 93 of them in 1993.
Reno to U.S. attorneys: Hand in your resignations, please Date: March 24, 1993 Publication: The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution Page Number: A/11 Word Count: 752
Attorney General Janet Reno on Tuesday asked all of the country's U.S. attorneys, including the three in Georgia, to submit their resignations, saying the Clinton administration wants to build its own team of federal prosecutors. U.S. Attorneys Joe Whitley in Atlanta, Edgar Ennis in Macon and Jay D. Gardner in Savannah said Tuesday that they will comply.
Typical Democratic tactic of screaming about something perfectly acceptable and hope that no one notices their own far more aggregious behavior in the same area in the past.
Update
I guess my analysis is not unique. From the Wall Street Journal:
Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons' Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint "Friend of Bill" Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas elite including Mr. Clinton. When it comes to "politicizing" Justice, in short, the Bush White House is full of amateurs compared to the Clintons....
As for some of the other fired Attorneys, at least one of their dismissals seemed to owe to differences with the Administration about the death penalty, another to questions about the Attorney's managerial skills. Not surprisingly, the dismissed Attorneys are insisting their dismissals were unfair, and perhaps in some cases they were. It would not be the first time in history that a dismissed employee did not take kindly to his firing, nor would it be the first in which an employer sacked the wrong person.
No question, the Justice Department and White House have botched the handling of this issue from start to finish. But what we don't have here is any serious evidence that the Administration has acted improperly or to protect some of its friends. If Democrats want to understand what a real abuse of power looks like, they can always ask the junior Senator from New York.
16 comments:
John, there's a big difference between "Ok, we're replacing everyone at the beginning of the administration" and "We're cherry-picking people who haven't been prosecuting enough Democrats, and we'll lie to Congress about it because there's nothing they can do anyhow".
Yeah, this time only 8 people lost their jobs at the whim of an administration, not 93.
I think it's sad that officials have to dot the is and cross the ts to the nth degree to avoid political backlash for something that was routine 10+ years ago.
And then they still get called liars.
Well, yeah, because Gonzales _did_ lie. If he had said to Congress, "We're rotating in some well-qualified people who we think deserve a chance in the position", there probably wouldn't have been much said. Saying that they were fired for performance reasons, when their records clearly indicated otherwise, was just stupid.
I have the impression that he didn't lie intentionally. Perhaps that's why his Chief of Staff resigned.
I go back to my previous position in another thread: If true wrongdoing can be found, burn 'em. Otherwise it's a case of political opportunism.
Well, Reagan did the same thing. When a new administration comes in, it is expected for this sort of thing to happen since US Attys do really serve the president. No one expected Bush to keep Clinton’s administration. And if Bush had fired all US Attys when he came in, it would not have been a big deal. But, this is a different because the firing came during the interim of Bush’s presidency. Now, this itself is not a big deal since he can fire/hire these folks at his own discretion. However, the implication behind the firings is that they were done because these US Attys were not performing a certain “political” agenda. The fact that these folks were not performing their job that is supposed to consist of some sort of unbiased enforcement of the justice system (e.g., constitution) is the true issue here.
Very well stated, Hunter S.
Umm, Hunter, Bush _did_ fire them all when he started.
I'm updating this post with some new information / opinion from the WSJ
Um, John, maybe the reason that Casey didn't bring any Whitewater indictments was that even Kenneth Starr couldn't find anything to pin on the Clintons?
And I see that article also ignores that Bush also fired 91 of 93 USAs at the beginning of his term.
Hmmmm.
This issue really caught my attention when it first came up but the more I look at it the more it appears to be a politically motivated, manufactured controversy.
Oh, yes, because firing 8 Federal prosecutors in the middle of a President's term is such a normal thing to do, especially when one of them is busily handing down indictments in the President's party.
Continued in a new post...
Dude, reading those emails I see that there was genuine concern that possible cases of election fraud were not being pursued.
For example, one of the guys axed was from Washington State and you know what a clusterfuck the 2004 election was there.
Ah yes, that paragon of truth, the WSJ.
They get the facts so wrong sometimes, you'd think they're the NYTimes. ;-)
First wrong fact about the WA state story - they call McKay a Democrat - he's a REPUBLICAN. When you get the basics wrong like that, how can you be trusted?
Second wrong fact - WSJ says McKay declined to investigate fraud in the elections - Truth: McKay DID investigate the *allegations* of fraud and did not find it. (There was an article in yesterday's Seattle Times about this http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003615329&zsection_id=2002107549&slug=mckay13m&date=20070313).
The Republicans are pissed because they couldn't bully their way into a win. McKay and the others were more loyal to our country than they were to their party, and that is inexcusable (to them, of course).
Hey, I clearly said the WSJ piece was "opinion", not news.
As to the WA election, you've mischaracterized it.
It wasn't the GOP bullying so much as it was a completely incompetent election board as well as the Dems getting state elections laws changed on the fly to recanvass until the results were to their liking.
Meanwhile, months later, hundreds of military absentee ballots were "discovered" uncounted.
Also, www.soundpolitics.com has documented, yes, DOCUMENTED many many illegal votes and dead voters. Shouldn't those have been prosecuted?????
So call it bullying all you want but that is a big, fat, whopping, blind, partisan lie. At best it was incompetence, at worst it was naked fraud.
An opinion piece based on incorrect facts, which they state AS facts. And there are more lies in that piece about the Clintons, too. But why should I be surprised.
As for the DOCUMENTED facts of fraud, I repeat: McKay did NOT see anything he could bring to a grand jury to get an indictment. Why should I believe your FACTS? I trust McKay more.
And as for soundpolitics.com - why is that you blast those "leftwing crackpot websites" but the rightwing websites tell TRUTH!!!
(I actually believe that both sides have their facts right some of the time - but you never give MM or websites that show issues ANY credit, and you are definitely WRONG about that, so why should I trust a Republican website to tell anything but their talking points?).
WTF are you talking about? I gave MM credit on my Sunday post!
And if you weren't a partisan loon and were a critical thinker, you'd go to the site I mentioned and see the DOCUMENTED evidence rather than listen to verbal opinion with no backing.
My mistake: Expecting rational thought.
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