This seems to obviously cross the line between politics and duty. From the Post:

The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to slow down, the prosecutor told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke, testified that he was at home the evening of Oct. 24 when he received the call on his cellphone from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and one of the Justice aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

Brownlee settled the case anyway. Eight days later, his name appeared on a list compiled by Elston of prosecutors that officials had suggested be fired.

Brownlee ultimately kept his job. But as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales confronts withering criticism over the dismissals, the episode in the OxyContin case provides fresh evidence of efforts by senior officials in the department’s headquarters to sway the work of U.S. attorneys’ offices.

The article contains responses from the DOJ, so it’s worth reading. The explanations from the DOJ only seem to reinforce that McNulty was at the center of all of this. It seems amazing to me that Gonzales still is AG.

George W. Bush doesn’t love America because he wants to be King, which is decidedly not what America is about. I’m not sure how else one can reconcile his administration’s behavior with regard to these subpoenas.

All snark aside, we’re heading into dangerous waters here. If this or, even worse, future Executive branches thinks it can unilaterally ignore Congressional subpoenas, I’m not sure what check exists against Executive overreach. This is decidedly not how the country was intended to operate.

In discussing the US Attorney scandal, a commenter brought up a WSJ editorial from March 14th that compared the recent Bush behavior to supposedly awful behavior from the Clinton White House. The editorial targets Sen. Clinton, of all people, for the Clinton administration’s replacement of all 93 US Attys. in 1993.

I’m pulling this up from the comments because the point is important. After searching through Technorati for commentary on this editorial, not enough people are blasting it, even though it’s at least a week old. The editorial is bogus, and it along with the comment by my reader, represent the worst sort of apologists for the Bush White House. First, “Clinton did it, too!” is not an affirmative defense for bad actions. Second, it’s not even true in this case!

You can also, if you like, skip this entire post and just read Joe Conason’s excellent rundown at Salon. He covers the same points and is a better writer, of course.

Responding to me in a post, NYC17 says:

It was that he had Janet Reno fire all 93 Us Attorneys at the start of his first term. A pretty opportune move at the time.

The Wall Street Journal just had an interesting article about it about ten days ago… it actually made fun of Bush for being an amateur at it compared to the Clinton administration.

Here’s the link:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009784

Actually, The Republicans did not have control until 1995 after the 1994 elections.

Whether we agree it’s wrong or not, it happens. Both parties do it, have done it, will do it, and unfortunately, it will continue.

It’s politics.

My reaction: Oh for crying out loud…

I’m going to be a patronizing jerk about this because the point is important. I shouldn’t have to say this but here it is: If all you can do is point to an editorial that says “Clinton did it to!” then you’ve pretty much conceded any point..

As an aside, the WSJ editorial page is notoriously conservative to the point of overt partisan bias to Republicans. The shot at Sen. Clinton wasn’t undertone, it was the point of the article (hence the headline and the entire first two paragraphs). I’m talking about the editorial page and not the news reporting, which is generally good (I was a WSJ subscriber for a while).

Before I start, I concede that NYC17 is right about one point: the Republicans weren’t in control until 1995, so my point about them investigating is a bit weaker. Of course, they did investigate a land deal from the 1970s, so it’s perhaps not a stretch to think that in 1995, they would’ve and could’ve launched an investigation into the firings had there been merit.

Regardless, let’s take this step by step (and I apologize in advance for, as I said, being a patronizing jerk about this).

1. Clinton replaces all 93 sitting AGs in March 1993… when he started his term in office (he won the election in Nov 1992, sworn in on Jan 21 1993). So, the first question is “Is this normally done at the start of a term, especially with a party switchover at the top?” The answer is yes, according to the acting AG for George H. W. Bush (the first one). Ronald Reagan did the same thing in 1981. Clinton also didn’t “replace them” all but instead got their resignations, as all political appointees offer when the Administration changes.

2. Why March, not February or January? Janet Reno was sworn in on March 12th, 2007.

3. Rostenkowski was indicted in 1994, in the middle of a midterm election cycle prior to November. That US Atty. was a loyal Democrat, alright. Rostenkowski also served 15 of 17 months in jail (Pres. Clinton did pardon him in 2001). The purge did little to change the timeline as the case broke open in July 1993 when the Congressional Postmaster plead out.

4. Even articles at the time came from the usual sources who also only had speculation and innuendo to offer.

5. In this case, we have the account of one of the US Attorneys on why he was fired to look at in addition to the other, mounting evidence that Republican staffers and politicians played a role with these decisions.

6. All of this boils down to the fact that these attorneys were all fired at an odd moment, when multiple investigations are going on into MASSIVE fraud in the CIA, Defense procurement, and several former or current US Congressmen and Senators. Carol Lam, in particular, had a huge investigation going on into the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal which was threatening other Republican reps.

It’s important to keep in mind that the Bush administration asked for and got a provision in place that allowed them to appoint “interim” replacements indefinitely to avoid confirmation hearings, thus skipping a key part of the checks and balances of our system. For example, Janet Reno was asked, in public hearings, about how she would handle the Rostenkowski matter if it came to indictments. This provision was snuck into a bill without open debate. Even Sen. Specter, whose office added the provision, claimed to have not known about it.

Setting that aside (the provision has since been repealed), the firings still seem to be driven by politics. Just read some of those emails in the document dump. This is wrong, and the timing and selectiveness is what makes it wrong. In fact, Josh Marshall makes the point very well in this appearance on Olbermann:

Note the emails from Miers: “… loyalty to the President and the Attorney General.” Um, ok, King George.

In the face of this, by the way, the Administration would rather provoke a Constitutional mini-crisis by challenging the subpoenas from Congress even though senior Executive branch staff testify on the record all the time. The only reason they’re asking for these conversations to be off the record is so they can avoid scrutiny and responsibility for their words. They got away with it during the 9/11 Committee investigations. Hopefully Congress will fight for transparency this time around.

Early on I said that this editorial and folks who say “It’s politics” represent the worst sort of apologists for the Administration. Using the “Clinton did it!” excuse or “It’s politics” means acknowledging that something wrong happened. Folks using the “Clinton did it, too!” defense are simply putting partisanship over patriotism. It’s really that simple. If something is wrong, we should address it and deal with it, not make excuses so that we don’t have to criticize “our guy.”