More evidence about "what was going on" with the U.S. Attorney firings
I know I said my next post would be about Kyle Sampson's experience, but I just saw something I think takes priority.
Check out this post by Kevin Drum concerning the politicizing of the Department of Justice.
Check out this post by Kevin Drum concerning the politicizing of the Department of Justice.
posted by WCharles @ 3/29/2007 02:55:00 PM
3 Comments:
From an article in the Washington Post, dated March, 15, 2007, the comparison between the Bush administration's firing of USA firings and Clinton's admin doing something similar....
"THE LATEST they-do-it-too excuse for the undeniably botched and increasingly suspicious firings of U.S. attorneys involves the 1993 episode in which President Clinton's new attorney general, Janet Reno, unceremoniously dismissed the first Bush administration's holdover U.S. attorneys. By comparison with the Reno massacre, we are told, the Bush administration's canning of eight U.S. attorneys was positively restrained; if you suspect political motives in the current controversy, so the argument goes, consider that when he was ousted by Reno, the U.S. attorney in the District, Jay Stephens, was just weeks away from deciding whether to indict House Ways and Means Chairman Daniel Rostenkowski (D-Ill.). Inconveniently for these conspiracy theorists, Mr. Rostenkowski was in fact indicted and convicted -- and, yes, he ultimately was pardoned by President Clinton."
The writer goes on to say the situations are different. But wait, bottom line both were political. Yes, it appears Bush was merely trying to oust those who roadblocks to his agenda, but how is that different than the firing of Jay Stephens for going after Rosty? In the end Rosty was convicted anyway but Clinton, "hey boys will be boys" and let him off the hook. Oh, but that is OK? But, Bush doing essentially the same thing deserves public lynching? What am I missing?
Yes, it is politics. So what, that's how the system works. Hey, in my job if I start acting against what my bosses think are their best interests as owners of the company, then I'm history, just as those USA's were. That's life. That's the system.
The problem is that Bush didn't own up to it immediately. The lying and deceiving. Gonzales needs to go. He has lost credibility and has made his boss look like a fool. The only problem I see in this situation is the attempted coverup.
I haven't confirmed this, but I think Clinton dismissed the USA who was investigating Whitewater. You forgot that one. :-) I thought that action, and the one concerning Rostenkowski were overtly political and I did not like them.
That being said, Bush is not "doing essentially the same thing." Not even close. As I discuss in "So, what's the big deal about the firing of U.S. Attorneys?" the partisan/political nature of the firings is something I find highly objectionable, but it is perfectly legal, perfectly understandable, and no basis for any scandal. I also say that even the lying and the deceiving is not the truly big deal. The truly big deal is described in the last three paragraphs of the "So, what's the big deal..." post.
I agree with your description of what could happen in your job. And speaking of your job, let's look at the case of Carol Lam from an HR perspective. Kyle Sampson's testimony confirmed what appeared to be the "official" story before his testimony as to why she was fired--because she was weak on immigration prosecution. The evidence to support that claim is dubious, but Sampson also stated that NO ONE at DoJ EVER told Lam that there was a problem regarding her immigration prosecutions.
As I've said before, I have worked on plenty of employment cases. Even in those in which someone's firing was for a completely and obviously BS reason, the employee was informed about the situation ahead of time. Even in those situations where the employer had a variety of legitimate reasons to fire someone and picked only one, there was a record of all the possible reasons and proof that the employee had been informed about such conduct. None of that happened in Lam's case.
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