Akkam’s Razor

This must be a big deal, as I'm seeing some conservative attacks on Josh Marshall's TPM and TPMMuckraker, who have been the pitbulls on this story.

The conservative blogosphere is deep in the 4th Stage of Republican Grief - Evoke Clinton (either one), in that Clinton fired all the US Attorneys at the start of his term as well.   This is true, and customary.

A few distinctions - while it is true that US Attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the President", and may be fired at any time, it is the manner, method, and machination through which this occurred that is troubling.As to the "Clinton did it too" argument - McClatchy ran an article stating that it is customary for an Administration to "clean house" at the start of their term, as Clinton did and Bush as well.  What is unusual is doing it mid-term.  Furthermore, knowing that several of those attorneys were sniffing in areas that could have been inconvenient for the party makes the move reek of malfeance.  Knowing that Gonzalez maintains he knew nothing, but supports the actions of his now-resigned Chief-of-Staff is no comfort.  The man is one of the most powerful non-elected officials in the United States, and he doesn't know what is underlings are up to?  Doubtful.

Secondly, some of those attorneys had stellar performance ratings.  As such, they were fired for "performance related reasons".  These, as a whole, seem to be failure to follow up on Republican party operative suggestive investigations of voter fraud in Washnington, the investigation of "any" local Democrats in New Mexico, and political retribution against the USA that successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham. 

The gist is that the Republicans would shriek about voter fraud (as they always do), and then in select areas (Ohio, Florida) have mechanisms in place to act on it. The mechanism was political materials sent to people at their non-residences that was returned as non-deliverable. These "bad" contacts are then put in a "caging list" where they are dropped from the database. These people were disproportionatley minorities, and significant numbers of the names were recorded as living on military bases and homeless shelters. Griffins was included in the distro on the original emails mistakenly sent to georgewbush.ORG. He was on the short list to replace one of the fired attorneys before he resigned, presumably over the caging list. 

The criteria put forth was that the USAs replacements had to be strong performers, good managers, and loyal to the president.  I suppose you could reward that as ignoring the law, following Administration priorities and ignore GOP corruption, and above all else, loyalty.

Equally troubling is the machination - during the debates over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, AFTER it had left the Judiciary Committee and prior to a vote, a vaguely worded provision was "slipped-in" from Arlen Specter's office, initially blamed on his Chief Counsel, Mike O'Niell.  The provision sought to bypass the advise-and-consent role of Congress in the act of confirming appointees offered by the President, by allowing the Attorney General to appoint them permanently, further allowing Justice to become a political patronage mill.  It subsequently appears that Jeffrey "Brett" Tolman, a former staff member of fellow-Judiciary Committee person Orin Hatch (R-UT) "slipped it in".  Tolman was subsequently appointed as US Attorney to Hatch's state of Utah.

You may choose to think that the politization of Justice is a good thing - I don't know. There's something to contemplate here - since the 1980s (or earlier) the Justice Department was where conservatives went, since they're beholden to the Executive Branch and not accountable to the electorate. Anton Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and scores of others have been through there. In one way, all policy is shaped and interpreted by Justice, and it's full of the partisan right, not the fiscal conservtive, socially liberal (mythological moderate) that we all know and love.

But "rule-of-law" conservatives should be concerned - there's a substantial likelihood of a Democratic Executive and Legislative Branches in 2008, which the Democratic Base will demand a house-cleaning at Justice.  Those same manners. methods, and machinations will bite Republicans in the ass, and their defense of the Bush Administration will come back to haunt them.

When the Administration states they were fired for "performance reasons", they are correct, and legally allowed to do just that. Despite the fact that nearly all of the attorney have satisfactory job ratings, they failed to enact Bush priorities, namely immigration enforcement, partisan prosecutions, and investigating allegations of voter fraud. So far we know that Representative Domenici (R-NM) and Wilson (R-NM) were pressuring them, and the orders came from the White House, through Harriet Miers, to this Sampson fellow, to Gonzalez.

The politicizing of justice is one of the most disgusting things these animals have ever done. Justice is supposed to be blind, not vindictive