Gonzales Must Go — Or, I Am Defending the Truth, Not the Administration
A blogger I respect, who shall remain nameless, writes:
Patrick,
I’ve read most of your Purge-gate posts with dismay. In brief, you are investing your credibility and integrity with an administration that does not deserve it.
Hold on there, hoss! Who said my purpose was defending the Administration?!
I started this post last night, before the weaselly Kyle Sampson testified, but its essential content remains the same. Apparently, I need to reiterate something I have said before: at this point, I don’t see myself as defending the Administration on this issue. Rather, I am pointing out lies told by Administration opponents.
One of those lies is that the Administration articulated no principled reasons for firing the U.S. Attorneys before the fact. Refuting that falsehold requires me to set out proof that they did articulate such reasons. Now, I don’t know whether those reasons were the real reasons or not. But they damn well were articulated.
Further, I have made it clear that I think Kyle Sampson schemed to lie to Congress. That much is evidence from this quote from a Sampson e-mail (in particular the last sentence):
As I said in this post:
When someone puts the phrase “good faith” in quotes, you should watch your back.
I agree with Sampson (and have said previously) that the Administration has bungled the explanation of these firings.
So, no, I’m not putting myself in the line of fire for this cast of clowns, which includes at least one liar, and maybe more.
I’m glad Sampson quit. He should have.
In addition, I think it’s time Gonzales hit the road. I admire Ed Whelan considerably, and I find myself in agreement with his views on Alberto Gonzales, expressed here, here, and here.
It is indeed time for Gonzales to go. In fact, it’s past time.
This conclusion is only corroborated by Sampson’s confirmation today that Gonzales was more involved in the specifics than he has claimed.
But I agree with Whelan: that doesn’t mean that everything Democrats have said about Gonzales and the Administration is true. Like Whelan, I have utter skepticism for the very weak case that U.S. Attorneys were fired for the express purpose of derailing prosecutions against Republicans, or jump-starting prosecutions against Democrats. Maybe that happened, but I see precious little evidence of it.
So make no mistake: I feel no duty to sit by and watch as the L.A. Times and other leftists distort the record. And I will continue to correct the record when I find it distorted by those on the left.
For example, this morning I documented the absolute travesty of the L.A. Times‘s decision to bury any mention of the clear fact that Bud Cummins has disputed the central premise of a major L.A. Times story on this controversy. I am proud of that post, in which I said:
It’s not “defending the Administration” to point this out. It’s defending the concept of giving the public the whole truth. The L.A. Times has made a deliberate decision to hide the whole truth from its readers. That’s what upsets me.
An analogy may help make the point. Imagine that a criminal defendant is accused of murder. There is evidence that he did it. The evidence includes the police’s discovery that the defendant’s alibi was fabricated. In other words, the defendant lied. But the cops go too far, and plant his DNA at the scene.
If you denounce the police for planting evidence, I suppose folks could say: hey, you’re risking your credibility by defending a known liar! But that would be an unfair characterization of your actions. In reality, denouncing the police is simply defending the truth, and the integrity of the process. This is a valid thing to do, whether the defendant is guilty or not.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve taken up the defendant’s side. It just means that, even if he’s guilty, it’s wrong for people to lie about him.
P.S. I think the person who has shed the most revealing light on the controversy, not surprisingly, is Jan Crawford Greenburg:
The firestorm over the fired U.S. attorneys was sparked last month when a top Justice Department official ignored guidance from the White House and rejected advice from senior administration lawyers over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The official, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal. McNulty’s testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House e-mail described to ABC News. According to that e-mail, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.
Until McNulty’s testimony, administration officials had consistently refused to publicly say why specific attorneys were dismissed and insisted that the White House had complete authority to replace them. That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ approach when he testified before the committee in January.
But McNulty, who worked on Capitol Hill 12 years, believed he had little choice but to more fully discuss the circumstances of the attorneys’ firings, according to a a senior Justice Department official familiar the circumstances. McNulty believed the senators would demand additional information, and he was confident he could draw on a long relationship with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, in explaining in more detail, sources told ABC News.
Sounds convincing to me. Read it all.
At the risk of defending a guy who really leads me to wonder “How did this guy become Chief of Staff”, I must take issue with what I think is overblown “outrage” at this particular e-mail. Frankly, it reminds me of Captain Renault being “Shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on” in Casablanca.
What Sampson is suggesting in this e-mail is pretty much SOP politics in divided government. It comes one month after the Dems take control of the Senate, putting Arkansas Democrat Senators Pryor and Lincoln in the majority, and in a position to gum up any effort to attempt to secure Senate confirmation of Griffen to the position he had been in for approximately 6 months at the time of this email. Cummins resigned in June 2006.
Three things can happen once a nominee is sent up to the Senate. The Senate can confirm, the Senate can deny, or the Senate can do nothing. What Sampson is advocating here is a strategy by which the WH could take advantage of the Senate’s penchant for doing nothing on a pending nomination in divided government late in a President’s second term.
Part of the motivation for this effort is the product of divided government. The problem is that both parties while in control of the Senate have used the tactic of holding hostage the Exec. branch nominees of the other side in order to advance other policy goals. This kind of “game-playing” with Senators of the opposite party is simply intended to minimize their leverage in participating the President’s selection of Exec. branch nominees.
The first part of the plan is simply to try and get Griffen’s anticipated nomination put into a “holding” pattern for an extended period of time, during which he would remain in the job as the “acting” or “interim” US Attorney, a position he was already in.
If the time ever came — and the goal was to delay that time as long as possible — that the Senate rejected Griffin’s nomination, or made it clear he would be rejected, then the plan was to drag out the selection of a replacement nominee more to the liking of the Democrat Senators. Once again, nothing new is being invented there.
In a matter of no more than 8-10 more months from now, the Senate is going to shut down consideration of any and all nominees for positions requiring confirmation. Congress will adjorn next November, and by January we’ll all be neck deep in a Presidential election season. So, Sampson wasn’t suggesting dragging out a 6 month process for 4 years, only for 10 months.
Would 6 months be unusual? Well, you tell me. Kevin Ryan was the first confirmed nominee of Pres. Bush to the NDCA US Attorney’s slot. He was confirmed in July 2002 — that’s 20 months after Bush was elected.
McGregor Scott was the first confirmed nominee to the US Attorney’s slot for the EDCA. He was confirmed in March, 2003 — 26 months after Bush’s oath of office.
What is similar between Calif. and Arkansas? Two Democrat Senators.
So, would it be unusual if it took 12 months to find a US Attorney for the EDAR if the Dem. Stnators rejected Griffin? That is all Sampson is suggesting — business (of politics) as usual.
What I suspect you find truly objectionable about Sampson’s suggestion is the fact that it is married to the new authority of the AG to appoint an interim US Attorney to a vacancy rather than have that done by the judiciary. I think you believe Sampson’s plan smacked of an intent to avoid the confirmation process altogether by using the new AG authority in a manner clearly contrary to the intent to the statute.
But, I suspect that even if the statute hadn’t been changed, DOJ/WH would have been able to put Griffin in the US Attorney’s job, and keep him there under the auspices of the District Court, whether the Democrat Senators liked it or not.
Why? Because the appointment of an Interim US Attorney under the old framework — which is now the new-old framework — allowed the AG to appoint an “acting” US Attorney for 90 days, to be followed by a judicial selection of an “interim” US Attorney for 120 days. The 120 appointments could be renewed by the district court until a new presidential nominee was confirmed.
So, it would have all come down to the actions of the Chief Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas — the Hon. J.Leon Holmes — a 2004 appointee to the District Court by George H. Bush.
So, the AG would have appointed Griffin to be “acting” for 90 days.
There’s no doubt in my mind that given Griffin’s background, Judge Holmes would not have bucked a WH appointee, and at the end of 90 days Judge Holmes would have named him “Interim” US Attorney for 120 days, and reappointed him every 4 months thereafter, without the WH ever having to send up a name to the Senate to replace him.
Under the old system, as long as the Chief Judge of the District was willing to reappoint the “interim” US Attorney, and the WH had no desire to nominate someone for Senate confirmation, the home state Senators were sh!t out of luck if they didn’t like it.
And Sampson/Rove/Miers/Gonzalez/et.al., could have simply “run out the clock”.
Nothing different than what Sampson was suggesting.
wls (c2d31f) — 3/30/2007 @ 12:23 amI should also note that this is exactly what happened in the EDCA from Jan 2001 to Mar. 2003, when John Vincent was the “Interim US Attorney” during the entire 26 month period.
wls (c2d31f) — 3/30/2007 @ 12:30 amWLS:
Is that apropos? Did CA senators have a problem with Vincent, or was it just that it took a long time to come up with Scott?
Are there cases (this or other ones) where an interim USA has been kept in place by judicial appointment over the objections of the home state senators?
DaBunny (9435fb) — 3/30/2007 @ 8:29 amAccording to Wikipedia, Kevin Ryan was only nominated to NDCA on May 15, 2002. He was confirmed in July 2002. So, wls, you tell me, isn’t your attempting to use Ryan as evidence that the Senate might wait for more than six months to confirm a Republican US Attorney inappropriate? How exactly does this two-month confirmation process relate to the issue at hand: the use of the brand-new permanent-interim appointment to cut the Senate out of the loop altogether?
Is there some example of Pres. Clinton appointing a protege of James Carville as US Attorney in a political-battleground state with two Republican Senators? I thought not.
I’m tired of GOP hacks trying to pretend that extraordinary new acts are business as usual. They aren’t.
Andrew J. Lazarus (7d46f9) — 3/30/2007 @ 9:39 amAndrew Lazarus —
You are correct that the actual confirmation of Ryan and Scott were accomplished in short order after they were selected and nominated.
What took forever was settling on Ryan and Scott as the nominees for the slots.
This was done through “committees” in each federal judicial district in California, established at the insistence of Feinstein and Boxer, to select appropriately “moderate” candidates who they could support in the Senate.
These committees were demanded by Boxer and Feinstein following Jeffords defection to the Dems, which put the Dems in a majority, and put Boxer and Feinstein in a position to hold up any nominees.
The exact same circumstance faced by the WH when the Dems took back control of the Senate in Nov. 06, putting Pryor and Lincohn now in the majority.
The Committees had 6 members — 3 picked by Gerald Parsky, the Bush-Cheney 2000 Campaign Chairman in California, and 3 members selected by Feinstein and Boxer. For a potential candidate to get the committee’s approval, which was required before the candidate could be forwarded to the WH as a potential nominee for US Attorney, the candidate had to get the votes of at least 4 Comm. members.
These “screening” committees is where the appointment process ground to a halt, and were the reason why it took until May 2002 for Ryan to be nominated, and January 2003 for Scott to be nominated.
Because they had been “pre-screened” and were acceptable to Feinstein and Boxer, of course they sailed through the Senate.
Sampson is suggesting nothing more than suffering through a long drawn-out process of selecting a US Attorney acceptable to both the WH and the Dem Senators, and there is ample precedent for that.
Frankly, Scott sailed through the Senate after the GOP took back control following the Nov. 2002 elections. Its questionable whether he would have gotten through a Dem. controlled Senate because he is a close political protege of Wally Herger, a conservative GOP Congressman from the rural areas of north-central California, now in his 11th term. Scott is the most likely successor to Herger’s seat when he choses to step aside.
wls (3f9087) — 3/30/2007 @ 12:25 pmi agree with your nameless blogger friend.
assistant devil's advocate (903f7e) — 3/30/2007 @ 12:29 pmDaBunny
I don’t think Feinstein and Boxer had any particular problem with John Vincent. He is/was a career prosecutor, and was the First Assistant to Clinton appointee Paul Seave, who was the US Attorney from 1996-2000.
Vincent, as a career guy, wasn’t interested in the top job, and merely served as a caretaker until a new nominee could be identified.
It took over 2 years for that to happen.
wls (3f9087) — 3/30/2007 @ 12:42 pmAh, now I get it. Instead of having caretaker interim USAs, now we can install a former head of GOP opposition research into a position where he would likely be rejected by the Democratic Senate and keep him there courtesy of a Loyal Bushie judge.
It must be so convenient to discover that the interests of justice and the interests of the Republican Party are permanently aligned.
Andrew J. Lazarus (7d46f9) — 3/30/2007 @ 1:53 pmAndrew Lazarus — and if you think what you described isn’t politics as usual in divided government, then you have never been in government.
Go goole up Bill Lan Lee — you’ll get the picture.
And, are you as critical of the Clinton Admin for installing US Attorneys like Alan Bersin and Janet Napalitano? What were their qualifications? Alan Bersin was so entralled with being US Attorney that he quit the job to take over as Superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District.
How about Paula Jean Casey?
Clinton appointed her in 1993 to be the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
What was pending in Arkansas? Ten criminal referrals by the Resolution Trust Corporation regarding Madison Gauranty S&L, two of which related to Whitewater.
Who was Paula Casey? She was a student of Bill Clinton’s and a campaign worker/supporter in Arkansas in 1992. At that time she was a law professor at the Univ. of Arkansas, and had NO PROSECUTORIAL EXPERIENCE.
Why was Paula Casey selected to be the US Attorney for Little Rock, considering the fact that most of her professional career had been as a law professor at the Univ. Ark. Little Rock? She graduated from law school in 1977, and joined the UALR faculty in 1978. From 1991 to 1993, while on leave from UALR, she served for 2 years as Chief Counsel and Legis. Assistant to Ark. Senator Dale Bumpers. She also worked for Clinton’s campaign in Arkansas. Was she simply a DNC Hack put in charge of a rear-guard defense of the Little Rock House when the Clinton’s went off to the WH?
How was her appointment any less “political” than the appointment of Tim Griffin, who, in addition to his political activites, was also an Army JAG officer for 10 years, a member of a staff of Independent Counsel David Barrett investigating HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and for one year on the counsel staff of the House Government Reform Committee.
Griffin also spent a one year detail from the Criminal Division to the EDAR where he was a Special Assistant US Attorney responsible for setting up the Project Safe Neighborhood program for then US Attorney Cummins.
He has an outstanding academic background, having graduated with honors from Tulane Law School, and a very highly regarded small college in Arkansas,
Helix Colleg.
To call this guy nothing more than a GOP Opposition researcher reveals more about your prejudicies than it does Griffin.
wls (3f9087) — 3/30/2007 @ 2:57 pmMcNulty lied. He said firings were for performance reasons. All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed. Only SF USA, Kevin Ryan had “poor performance issues”, and they weren’t because he wasn’t persuing AG priorities. He was a poor manager and as a result the SF ofice had major morale issues.
McNulty had Battle lie (by ommission) while making the firing phone calls. Bogden, Charlton, Cummins, Iglesias and McKay — told reporters they were not given any reason for their firings and had not been told of any performance problems.
McNulty’s lies about the reason the (other than Ryan) USA’s were fired is why the USAs testified. They should; they were being libeled.
The were fired severally because: Charlton clashed more than once with the Justice Department’s headquarters over murder cases in which he opposed seeking the death penalty. Lam oversaw the probe that resulted in the guilty plea of then-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a Republican. Two others connected to that case, including a former senior CIA official, were indicted two days before Lam left the job on Thursday. Bogden and Charlton were also in the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress when they were fired. And Iglesias wouldn’t bring charges against Democrats prior to last Nov. elections.
Nailer (db1823) — 3/30/2007 @ 3:46 pmNailer — can you define “performance reasons”?
Can you read McNulty’s mind in terms of what he meant by the phrase “performance reasons”?
How do you know that the reasons for asking the 6 US Attorneys to resign weren’t based on “performance reasons” if you don’t even know what the parameters of that phrase are?
wls (3f9087) — 3/30/2007 @ 5:10 pmNapolitano was a former partner at my old law firm.
Yes, she was appointed for purely political reasons, since her qualifications as a jurist (as well as a governor) are questionable, and considering the firm in question in the law firm for the DNC.
Petit Bourgeois (375601) — 3/30/2007 @ 5:48 pmWe’ll take that anonymous comment for what it’s worth — which is pretty much nothing. Anonymous commenters can make good points when they provide authority for their statements, but — especially in the absence of a long track record of reliability — readers should keep in mind that it is very risky to put credence in representations made by anonymous people, without any corroboration.
Patterico (04465c) — 3/30/2007 @ 5:56 pmI’m not anonymous to those who matter.
You can look it up: Napolitano’s former law firm represents the DNC. I’m not the one insulated from reality as a result of having a governmental occupation. You should do some homework before making accusations of falsehoods.
And Gonzalez didn’t quit this Friday or last Friday for that matter–as you predicted. Talk about reliability! What troubles me is that these clowns are still employed on my taxpayer dime after they admitted spying on citizens by going around the FISA court (a felony). They should be serving time or swinging from a gallows.
Furthermore, readers should be precautious about those who surround themselves with Arnold supporters who claim to be conservative and Republican.
Petit Bourgeois (375601) — 3/30/2007 @ 6:36 pm“Im not anonymous to those who matter.”
Do the people you’re trying to convince matter?
” Im not the one insulated from reality as a result of having a governmental occupation.”
I’m a Deputy District Attorney in Compton. You are some civil lawyer in some law firm. Who is “insulated from reality” again? Do you realize how you sound?
“You should do some homework before making accusations of falsehoods.”
I did no such thing. I cautioned readers against trusting unverifiable claims by anonymous commenters — such as your claim that a person was in your law firm. That’s not something we can “look up” unless we know your name.
That is different from claims you make that don’t depend on our trusting you. Those are equally as valid as if they had been made by a named individual.
Patterico (07d532) — 3/30/2007 @ 7:03 pmPetit — I can’t tell if you agree with me that Napolitano was a political crony or not.
But the facts are that she had been out of law school only 10 years when appointed in 1993. She had been a partner in an Ariz. firm for only 4 years, and her only real claim to fame was that she represented Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
In other words, there wasn’t a single thing about her that suggested she was qualified to be US Attorney when she was appointed.
I’m not quibbling with her performance in the position. By all accounts that I’m familiar with, she did just fine.
But the complaints raised here by Admin. opponents are that Tim Griffin was just a RNC Oppo. Researcher and Rove protege.
I’m simply pointing to historical parallels involving Dem. Presidential appointees who had thinner resumes.
wls (c2d31f) — 3/31/2007 @ 2:29 amNice little distraction congress has given us, questioning the legallity of the terminations of a few federal prosecutors. Meanwhile Alcee Hastings clearly violates the law and nobody notices.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/6228.shtml
Boss429 (5e938f) — 3/31/2007 @ 3:50 amWLS, given what you say about Griffin, the one thing I’ll retract is my claim that he couldn’t win Senate confirmation. Maybe a few Dems would have been willing to overlook his most recent experience, as Rove-trained attack dog. Funny thing, though, the Administration clearly didn’t want to find out if this is true or not.
I don’t see the point of much else that you wrote, though. I certainly agree that Clinton, and also all those other presidents, appointed political associates as US Attorneys. The differences are that (1) they didn’t then request from their appointees groundless investigations of members of the opposite party and then fire them when disappointed in lack of c0operation, (2) Clinton didn’t get to use the new permanent-interim dodge (Paula Casey went through Senate confirmation hearings where Republicans were free to make their criticisms, and filibuster if they so desired), (3) whatever cronyism Paula Casey performed, a series of Republican attorneys never charged Clinton in the Whitewater Land Deal (those referrals were from a political enemy of Clinton, weren’t they?), and it sure wasn’t for lack of trying, so complaining that Casey didn’t either is a little odd.
I also don’t share your opinion of divided government. I don’t recall parallels to the divided government we had at times under Reagan and Bush 41. I’d suggest the recency effect is at work: divided government is now represented by Orrin Hatch’s obstructionism during the Clinton years (how long was it before he allowed a vote on Clinton nominee Judge Willie Fletcher? Almost four years?) and by the Bushies’ panicked re-discovery of the Goose/Gander principle, leading to executive overreach.
Andrew J. Lazarus (2484d4) — 3/31/2007 @ 7:40 amWow. I’ve got to read this site more. Even the commenters (present instance excepted) know what they’re talking about.
Just wanted to add: post suggests you need to watch your back when someone puts “good faith” in quotation marks. Sounds more like cynicism than dishonesty to me. I would think that’s a occupational hazard in government service. It’s hard not to get cynical about government just reading about it.
Don (807707) — 3/31/2007 @ 11:16 amThere’s nothing wrong with you, Patterico, simultaneously not defending the Bush Administration, and simultaneously wanting to rebut any ‘lefty smears’ you find to be inaccurate. You can indeed support axing Gonzales and still want to make sure allegations are accurate ones.
Where it all falls apart is, of course, the lack of any inaccurate allegations. You’ve fallen back on formulations like “I see scant evidence” that the eight attorneys were purged due to a failure to prosecute Democrats on charges that have no merit. It’s true that Alberto Gonzales has yet to voluntarily hand over an email where he says something like “Carol is going after Jerry Lewis, it’s time to remove her before she finds anything else!!!!”
But, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, absence of evidence is hardly evidence of absence.
As Josh Marshall has pointed out so far:
1. After 10 weeks, nobody has been able to explain why they were fired. ‘Performance-related issues’ has been shot down as clearly not true. ‘Not following BushAdmin priorities’ has been cast into serious doubt, with emails from the WH after the firings, clearly trying to construct the case for immigration issues rather than referring to it, and testimony that no one ever bothered to, oh, ask Carol Lam to prosecute more immigration cases, rather than just fire her for supposedly not doing it. We’re left with Sampson digging down to, gee, it’s really hard to say why they were fired, I didn’t keep any notes.
2. The ‘investigation’ process has been ludicrously kid-gloved. We’re asking Gonzales to hand over evidence relating to his own crimes with no ability to search and seize. It’s a joke.
Criminals rarely walk into the station and hand over their own smoking guns. It’s no surprise that Rove may have been smart enough to avoid having a smoking gun at any time. Watergate would never have happened without the Nixon tapes, and the operatives have learned about that.
But whether or not there’s an airtight legal case already doesn’t mean that intelligent observers can’t conclude that U.S. attorneys were probably fired for indicting Republicans, or for not indicting Democrats.
Mostly, they already have.
That’s why some people question your credibility – because you may be willing to say Gonzales should be dumped, but because either you seem to be ignoring a lot of circumstantial, environmental, logical indicators that the attorneys were fired for politics, or else you’re only pretending to ignore it, taking cover behind the arguably semi-correct “not enough evidence”.
You’re still way ahead of the rest of the right-wing pack, who either blow the thing up as a fake scandal, or ignore it completely.
glasnost (204702) — 3/31/2007 @ 1:09 pmYou are some civil lawyer in some law firm.
Wrong. I’m a proud non-lawyer =) And this is not the place to discuss my employment history in any event.
My reality consists of living in a 92% “hispanic” (read: mexican) neighborhood. If I recall, the change in demographic was done right under the noses of the public servants who work for me, the taxpayer.
My point is that Napolitano was a purely polical appointee who works for one the furthest-left-wing law firms in the country. This is the firm that brought you the Miranda decision. These are the lawyers for the DNC.
I remember writing a reply to the memo that said “during election season, please do not hold any policial events at the office because we don’t want to give our clients the appearance that we favor one candidate or party over another.” I wrote back that if the firm wanted to give the appearance of political neutrality, it probably shouldn’t have a political party as a client. That went over like a lead zeppelin.
Napolitano sat on the bench because of who she knew, not because she was qualified. She is a shitty and treasonous governor too, vetoing every single pro-American bill that crosses her desk. It’s all cronyism with the intent of destroying this country.
Petit Bourgeois (375601) — 4/1/2007 @ 7:57 pmWLS:
If Vincent was a non-controversial caretaker (as I thought) then that seems to weaken your claim putting Griffin in would’ve been unremarkable.
In the past, when there was a delay in finding a USA who could be approved, the Chief Judge put in a non-controversial interim USA. Separation of powers issues aside, this seems like a decent solution.
Putting Griffin in without Senate confirmation is a qualitative difference. JAG or not, the guy who proudly claimed to make the bullets for the war against Democrats is quite controversial, and I very much doubt that he would’ve been left in place by the Judiciary over majority objections.
That’s not “business as usual” (divided government or not) any more than tossing out a clutch of USAs in mid-term.
DaBunny (9435fb) — 4/2/2007 @ 7:09 am[…] Iglesias to the list to be highly suspicious. It certainly raised concerns that Kyle Sampson had proposed to lie to Congress about Bud Cummins. And the buffoonish Kyle Sampson had proposed Patrick Fitzgerald for the firing list — […]
Patterico’s Pontifications » That Report on the U.S. Attorneys — and the Horrible Reporting that the L.A. Times Did on the Scandal (b16ea8) — 10/1/2008 @ 11:22 pm