GONZALES CALLED TO RESIGN.

The case of the fired federal prosecutors keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, not to mention more odoriferous, with each passing day.

Let's see if we've got this straight.


Two years ago, the White House counsel suggested firing all 93 top federal prosecutors around the nation, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales quashed that as "a bad idea." Good move. The prosecutors are supposed to be kept free from political pressure.


But Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, then spent all those months orchestrating an elaborate plan to dump some of the prosecutors and circumvent Congress in naming replacements. On Dec. 7, seven U.S. attorneys in districts from Michigan to California were fired, an unprecedented move in the middle of a presidential term. An eighth had been sacked earlier.


Justice officials have offered an array of shifting and evasive explanations, and a gaggle of e-mails forced out by congressional demands reveal how they misled Congress about the purge.


Gonzales now says mistakes were made but he was clueless about the details. Sampson has already quit and, not surprisingly, several congressional Democrats and one GOP senator are calling on Gonzales to follow him out the door.


The cries for Gonzales' head, however, are premature and miss the point. The emerging evidence is that the plan was hatched and approved inside the White House. The Gonzales hubbub just diverts attention from the still murky White House role in these firings.


Among the key unanswered questions:


•Why were these eight fired? For all the commotion so far, the answer remains unclear. Explanations have ranged from the prosecutors' failure to carry out administration priorities to "under-performance." At least one prosecutor, in New Mexico, was let go after congressional Republicans complained he wasn't investigating Democrats fast enough.


Last week, Gonzales wrote on this page that those fired in December "simply lost my confidence" and that the episode is "an overblown personnel matter." This week, he told a news conference that he wasn't involved in the details. Obviously, both cannot be true.


•Whose idea was it? The e-mails suggest the original plan to replace all 93 came from then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, the short-lived Supreme Court nominee. Of course, Miers succeeded Gonzales as White House counsel, and Sampson followed him from the White House to Justice, so it's a little hard to tell where the White House ends and Justice begins.


This much is clear: The appointment of Tim Griffin, a former aide to White House adviser Karl Rove, to replace the federal prosecutor in Arkansas was important to Rove and Miers.


•Was the administration trying to stop investigations of powerful Republicans? There's no hard evidence, but there's one curious detail in the e-mail traffic about fired prosecutor Carol Lam, of San Diego.


Lam started the probe that sent GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham to prison last year and resulted in the recent indictments of a top CIA official and a well-connected contractor. On May 11, the Los Angeles Times reported that the investigation resulting in Cunningham's conviction was expanding to include another powerful Republican, Rep. Jerry Lewis (news, bio, voting record), of California. That same day, Sampson e-mailed a White House aide asking him to call to discuss "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam."


Congressional investigators might want to ask what that "real problem" was. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared the way to issue subpoenas for five Justice officials to testify about their roles in the firings. It put off for a week a vote on subpoenas for Rove, Miers and another White House aide.


Testimony from all those involved is needed because getting the full story is the only way to restore faith in the independence of federal prosecutors.


The prosecutors are presidential appointees, and it would be naive to believe that they could be insulated entirely from politics. New presidents, particularly those who replace chief executives of the opposite party, generally name all new U.S. attorneys when they take office. Nevertheless, prosecutors shouldn't be treated as political pawns.


For all the heat on Gonzales, President Bush is ultimately accountable for any meddling with traditions that have given federal prosecutors the independence they need to file civil and criminal cases without regard to politics or party lines.

In his first comments on the matter this week, Bush seemed eager to push responsibility toward the Justice Department and treat the matter as a public relations problem, rather than what it really is: a threat to the integrity of the judicial system.

Okay, can you tell me why Clinton DID FIRE ALL 93 attorneys?
Can you tell me the reason for those firings?
Why did the media downplay those firings?
Why is the left so heated up over these firings?
Where was this anger when Clinton fired all 93?

Oh boy...now we're reading that Karl Rove may have had a hand in the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. Hmm...since he's the president's political consultant and since those attorneys are political appointees....what's the big deal? The media sure is worked up over this. Funny how there wasn't the same outrage when Bill Clinton canned all of his U.S. Attorneys. But, as you know, there is a different standard between Republican and Democratic presidents. It's called media bias.

There is absolutely nothing to this story. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees...they serve at the pleasure of the president. Why they were fired, how they were fired, who fired them...what they were fired for.. none of it matters. Just like cabinet secretaries, the president can fire them all whenever he wants. There is no explanation needed. There is no controversy here. This is all just an invented scandal by the media and the left.

And some spineless "Republicans" are actually going along with it. Calling on the Attorney General to resign? What for? Doing his job? There are already some media outlets comparing this non-scandal to Watergate. How? In what way? When you serve at the pleasure of the president, you can be fired at anytime for any reason. There is real story here. The president exercised his prerogative ... and some U.S. Attorneys were fired. The Dems know, however, that they can make this into a major scandal because they have a media establishment that is not only willing, but positively eager to help them out.

becuz it says right there that when a new administration comes in they have the perogative to hire an all new bunch if they want to, but firing them in the middle of the term only says one thing. They were investigating the wrong people, namely Republicans.

I agree LJ!!

quote:

becuz it says right there that when a new administration comes in they have the perogative to hire an all new bunch if they want to, but firing them in the middle of the term only says one thing.

If that is the case, which it was not, then explain to me why an additional 30+ U.S. Attorneys were fired by Clinton after the 93 were let go?

huhhhhhhhhh???????? I just told you why, he can fire them when he's elected when ever he wants, not after they start investigating what he wants quite, like Bush.

quote:

Originally posted by LISAJUNKIEE:
huhhhhhhhhh???????? I just told you why, he can fire them when he's elected when ever he wants, not after they start investigating what he wants quite, like Bush.

LOL you have failed to give me a reason for the 93 Clinton firings at the start of his first term and an additional 30+ firings well into his second term.

The explanation that the mainstream media gave us is not the reason.

It was very nice of the Clinton Administration to give the fired US Attorneys only 10 days to pack up and leave.