Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Kay on the U.S. Attorney Firings
Sen. Hutchison continues to faithfully toe the party line:
As Glenn Greenwald amply argues, this is bull.
Without embracing Gonzales, Republicans pointed out that presidents are free to replace U.S. attorneys at will. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) noted on MSNBC that some of those who were replaced "haven't whined or complained about it" and added, "I think that there's a lot of politics, but I don't think it's just on one side."
As Glenn Greenwald amply argues, this is bull.
To suggest, then, that this controversy has arisen by virtue of some "double standard" -- prompted by nothing more than routine firings of U.S. attorneys which "Clinton did, too" -- is frivolous on its face. When Bush engaged in the routine matter of replacing all U.S. attorneys at the start of his administration, nobody objected.
The scandal derives from the highly unusual effort to cherry-pick prosecutors for firings, in the middle of an administration, for blatantly political purposes (as well as the subsequent false statements, including by top DOJ officials to Congress, about what occurred). It is true that Bush did what Clinton did -- back in 2001, when nobody objected. What he has done now is manifestly not what Clinton did (or any President other than, perhaps, Richard Nixon), which is what accounts for the scandal.
