Purging Prosecutors

At Talk Left, Jeralyn Merritt provides a law lecture:

"U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. There is no reason to replace them in a non-election year, except for malfeasance. If it turns out that the fired U.S. Attorneys did nothing wrong, but were replaced anyway in a non-election year, then the Bush Administration has overstepped its bounds.

"I'm no fan of Republican U.S. Attorneys who got their job because they carried water for Bush in 2004 and had the blessing of their District's senators. That's the way the job is assigned.

"But, firing them because they didn't bring the cases the Administration wanted them to bring, or because they brought cases against Republicans or didn't bring cases against Democrats is beyond the pale.

"Once appointed, the U.S. Attorney is not supposed to be a political hack. He or she, like every prosecutor, is supposed to make decisions to ensure that justice is done. If you're skeptical the U.S. Attorney can switch horses so fast, you have a right to be.

"In a way, for people to now complain that Alberto Gonzales is a political hack isn't right. Blame the Senators who voted for his confirmation."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff is in the no-big-deal camp, and says the same would be true had a reelected Bush cleaned house:

"It's worth noting . . . that such a mass firing would not have been unprecedented. President Clinton, through Janet Reno, fired all of the U.S. Attorneys after he was elected. Clinton used the mass firing as a means of covering up his real intention -- to fire the U.S. Attorney in his home state of Arkansas. They didn't call Clinton 'Slick Willie' for nothing."

That's not an undisputed fact, and it's SOP for U.S. attorneys to lose their jobs when the White House changes hands. That's why we have elections.

"This time, eight prosecutors lost their jobs. It's not implausible to think that out [of] 93 U.S. Attorneys, eight might be good candidates for replacement . . . If was there a serious problem of voter fraud in the state, was Iglesias sluggish in dealing with it, and did the administration act even-handedly by insisting that its U.S. attorneys adequately deal with serious allegations of voter fraud lodged by both political parties?"

Dick Polman says Gonzales "employed all the classic defenses:

" The Passive Voice defense. He confessed that 'mistakes were made here,' the usual form of words that is meant to suggest that maybe the mistakes sort of happened by themselves, that no actual human being had specifically made them. Republicans might be well advised to remember that this was the same form of words used by Ted Kennedy right after Chappaquiddick.