DOJ having issues of there own

[jman220]

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One cannot understate the damage that firing US Attorneys for political reasons does to the rule of law in this country. I am dismayed that some intelligent people who posted above do not see this. This is one of the worst things that this administration has ever done, and there's a lot of competition for that title.

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So was it OK for Clinton to fire 93 DAs, including those tasked with investigating the Whitewater scandal one month after he was sworn in?

My instincts tell me you have a double standard for Repubs and Dems.......

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See my post above for the answer to this point.

[NCAces]

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I am sure that 99% of the previous USA that were let go by a new administration were also talented and dedicated public servants who received high marks. What specific political reasons where there for firing these USA's that everyone is objecting to?

NCAces

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I don't mean this to be disrespectful. It sounds like you are not all that familiar with the facts underlying this story. The "specific political reasons" have been discussed ad nauseum in many of the news reports. It's hard to have a discussion with someone who does not seem to be familiar with the key facts but (apparently) simply wants to jump to the defense of the Attorney General and/or the president.

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No disrespect taken ... I've not kepy up with the specific issues in these cases. Regardless, I believe my general points as to what and why POTUS can and can't do stand. I'll take some time to read up on the current issue and weigh in if I get a chance.

That said, no one seems to be addressing my Kennedy example. As good a reason as there was to choose your own USAs, and it concerned policy issues and a single set of cases.

NCAces

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I would much rather Bush had dismissed all the AUSA's rather than just target the ones he did. Dismissing all of them is fine, they do serve at the pleasure of the president, and if the president wants to give some more people a chance, thats fine. However, setting the precedent that you are going to target prosecutor's because you don't like what kinds of people they have and have not been prosecuting is a terrible precedent.

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You are JFK. United States Attorney in Birmingham is not being agressive enough enforcing the Civil Rights Act. Your position is that it would have been wrong for JFK to replace him. Is that your position? If not, then what is wrong with Bush replacing a small group of USAs who are not enforcing certain laws or policies?

NCAces

[jman220]

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I am sure that 99% of the previous USA that were let go by a new administration were also talented and dedicated public servants who received high marks. What specific political reasons where there for firing these USA's that everyone is objecting to?

NCAces

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I don't mean this to be disrespectful. It sounds like you are not all that familiar with the facts underlying this story. The "specific political reasons" have been discussed ad nauseum in many of the news reports. It's hard to have a discussion with someone who does not seem to be familiar with the key facts but (apparently) simply wants to jump to the defense of the Attorney General and/or the president.

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No disrespect taken ... I've not kepy up with the specific issues in these cases. Regardless, I believe my general points as to what and why POTUS can and can't do stand. I'll take some time to read up on the current issue and weigh in if I get a chance.

That said, no one seems to be addressing my Kennedy example. As good a reason as there was to choose your own USAs, and it concerned policy issues and a single set of cases.

NCAces

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I would much rather Bush had dismissed all the AUSA's rather than just target the ones he did. Dismissing all of them is fine, they do serve at the pleasure of the president, and if the president wants to give some more people a chance, thats fine. However, setting the precedent that you are going to target prosecutor's because you don't like what kinds of people they have and have not been prosecuting is a terrible precedent.

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You are JFK. United States Attorney in Birmingham is not being agressive enough enforcing the Civil Rights Act. Your position is that it would have been wrong for JFK to replace him. Is that your position? If not, then what is wrong with Bush replacing a small group of USAs who are not enforcing certain laws or policies?

NCAces

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You can't see the difference between someone being replaced for failing to uphold civil rights laws and someone being replaced because they're prosecuting your political cronies and not prosecuting your political enemies? Come on.....

[zyqwert]

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You are JFK. United States Attorney in Birmingham is not being agressive enough enforcing the Civil Rights Act. Your position is that it would have been wrong for JFK to replace him. Is that your position? If not, then what is wrong with Bush replacing a small group of USAs who are not enforcing certain laws or policies?

NCAces

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It's worth noting the 'performance reasons' appear to be entirely republican vs. democrat. I would have more sympathy if, for example, a US Attorney in San Francisco refused to prosecute medical marijuana cases and was fired for that. That would still be firing due to disagreeing with the US Attorney's judgement, but it's better than "party before all".

This is a bad precident. Today's outrage becomes tomorrow's standard operating procedure, and the country is the poorer for it. I can think of other cases where tradition has been broken to win a political fight and the losers have felt cheated and determined to get revenge by any means:

<ul type="square">[*]The threat to eliminate the filibuster.[*]Blocking a qualified supreme court nominee for partisan reasons. Among the fallout: stealth nominees who refuse to state the obvious.[*]Death penalty abolitionists using the courts in bad faith for their "greater good", inspiring the conservatives on the court to make absurd and unwise decisions to shut them down. (Here a former clerk describes how increasing politics damaged the court.)[*]The republican congress decides to toss out all traditions that include the minority party in discussing and amending legislation. Can the democrats resist revenge?[/list]
My point is the choice of political weapons should be constrained by tradition to promote trust and civility, and the total warfare approach often comes back to bite the innovator. I do think Bush is within his rights ("at the pleasure of the president"), but unwise.

[NCAces]

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You can't see the difference between someone being replaced for failing to uphold civil rights laws and someone being replaced because they're prosecuting your political cronies and not prosecuting your political enemies? Come on.....

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Sure I can:

1. I finally got the time to review the firings ... up to this point I was arguing more about general principals - firing all 93 at once, firing those who are not enforcing laws that the administration thinks they should - than specific incidents.

2. The Arkansas firing seems to the worst. Pure Cronyism at its worst. The Washington State firing seems to be the most legitimate ... he should have investigated some of the election fraud that took place. All the others are somewhere in between, and at best smell bad, which is not good.

3. I don't think this is the major scandal it is being made out to be, just as I wasn't nonplussed when Clinton let all 93 go at the same time. Seems to me that they way they did this is clumsy politically, and the Arkansas one stinks, but to me the other ones aren't so specifically targeted to make it too big a deal. Politically damaging, a little. Damaging to our justice system, not really.

NCAces

[jman220]

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You can't see the difference between someone being replaced for failing to uphold civil rights laws and someone being replaced because they're prosecuting your political cronies and not prosecuting your political enemies? Come on.....

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Sure I can:

1. I finally got the time to review the firings ... up to this point I was arguing more about general principals - firing all 93 at once, firing those who are not enforcing laws that the administration thinks they should - than specific incidents.

2. The Arkansas firing seems to the worst. Pure Cronyism at its worst. The Washington State firing seems to be the most legitimate ... he should have investigated some of the election fraud that took place. All the others are somewhere in between, and at best smell bad, which is not good.

3. I don't think this is the major scandal it is being made out to be, just as I wasn't nonplussed when Clinton let all 93 go at the same time. Seems to me that they way they did this is clumsy politically, and the Arkansas one stinks, but to me the other ones aren't so specifically targeted to make it too big a deal. Politically damaging, a little. Damaging to our justice system, not really.

NCAces

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I will admit that this may not be the major scandal of 2007 or anything like that, and I may take this a little more personally/seriously than is merited due to my job. I still don't like the precedent it sets though, is there any other example in history of a president dismissing AUSA's like this? (And I don't mean Clinton or JFK, I think we've established there's a big difference here).

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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I don't think fire is a good word for what Clinton did, and mass replacement does not seem to be unusual. From wikipedia

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There is NOTHING in your wiki link.
The NORMAL process is to gradually replace all 93 DOJ DAs. This insures a smooth transitions and allows these DAs to complete cases they are involved in. Court cases do not magically stop just because a new president takes office. To fire a DA in the middle of a case is not an effective management strategy. Clinton ignored this precedent and fired all 93 at once. Each was given 10 days notice to move out of their offices. The DOJ Whitewater investigation into Clinton corruption was ended.

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In the emails to Karl Rove from 2005, the suggestion was floated to replace them all again. This would have been defensible, but instead they decided it would be disruptive, so they only fired those who failed to use the office as directed by Karl Rove (see wiki link for detailed reasons).

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These are political appointments. Anyone in the executive branch can throw their 2 cents in... Part of the power of the executive branch is to set priorities in cases to prosecute. Their priorities might be drugs, white collar crime, corruption, etc... DOJ lawyers that don't follow these priorities should be dismissed. Their job is to implement the adminstrations priorities with regard to law enforcement.

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Replacing all US Attorneys at the start of your term?
Standard, not double standard.

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Nope, you are spinning the facts....
The standard is the gradually replacement of all DOJ DAs to insure a smooth transition. Clinton's mass firings were a first. All pending cases that the DOJ were involved with at the time were thrown into turmoil. One of many examples where the Clinton administration failed to act like grownups...

Now I hear that Bush is going to allow members of the executive branch to testify to a senate dog-and-pony grandstanding show. The legislative branch has ZERO authority to compel members of the executive branch to testify to them. The 911 commision tried to make this happen but Bush had the balls to tell them to either go-to-hell or come to the White House. Bush can tell the democrat senators to shove their subpoenas up their *** and the senate can't do a damn thing about it.... of course the political counter-move is to accuse the executive branch of cover-up. Most presidents play the game and send their underlings to be bullied by a bunch of nitwit senators. I can't believe how politically naive Bush is. This is a NOTHING story and Bush add fuel to the fire by publically chastises Gonzo for not informing the Senate. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[zyqwert]

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There is NOTHING in your wiki link.
The NORMAL process is to gradually replace all 93 DOJ DAs.

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There was this memo which shows Bush's intention to replace the 93 by June of 2001.

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These are political appointments. Anyone in the executive branch can throw their 2 cents in... Part of the power of the executive branch is to set priorities in cases to prosecute. Their priorities might be drugs, white collar crime, corruption, etc... DOJ lawyers that don't follow these priorities should be dismissed. Their job is to implement the adminstrations priorities with regard to law enforcement.

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Of course political appointees can be fired at will. The appearance in this case is competence is defined by party loyalty. The administration's priority with regard to law enforcement is "get democrats" and "protect republicans", and they expect the US Attorneys to fall in line. For those like jman (a federal prosecutor?) who imagined that once appointed, a US Attorney would put the law first, this is disappointing.

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Nope, you are spinning the facts....
The standard is the gradually replacement of all DOJ DAs to insure a smooth transition. Clinton's mass firings were a first. All pending cases that the DOJ were involved with at the time were thrown into turmoil. One of many examples where the Clinton administration failed to act like grownups...

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I am not trying to spin dishonestly, I suffer from a lack of facts. My googling for contemporary stories on past DOJ firing practices has failed. I have no personal memory of the Clinton firings. So, I'm stuck with wikipedia, the CRS report on in term firings, and news reports that recycle the same few facts. At least now I understand why Clinton was different. He replaced the 93 within 10 days, while Bush did within 6 months upon taking office. Six months seems better, but both sound very disruptive to me. I guess it depends on how long cases take.

It's not clear to me if you are suggesting the Clinton firings were incompetence (disruption), or obstructing justice (killing Whitewater investigation). Obstruction of justice would be akin to what we have today and worth investigating. Of course it is now 2007 and not 1993 so I think I'm ready to let that go.

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This is a NOTHING story

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Some prosecutors pissed off various politicians, and their boss was unwilling to protect them. A good AG would have protected his competent employees. Now it looks like the AG might get fired.

The original newsworthy part was the Patriot Act easter egg that lets them make temporary apointments who can serve out the term without Senate approval (upsetting the Senate when they figured out what they'd done to themselves). Obviously money spent lobbying is a waste -- to get the UIGEA repealed we simply need to bribe one staffer.

[niss]

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This is a NOTHING story

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Thankfully, for the sake of the rule of law, neither the Congress nor the media seems to agree with you.

[NCAces]

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This is a NOTHING story

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Thankfully, for the sake of the rule of law, neither the Congress nor the media seems to agree with you.

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Yeah, because congressional whores and media wouldn't beat the drum of a non-story for political and financial reasons.

With all due respect you've made some good points in this thread ... but this isn't one of them. The minute we look at whether politicians or media are interested in something to guage it's importance, we are in trouble.

NCAces