Presidential adviser Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican Party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.
In an interview yesterday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.
“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.
“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.
Business as usual in the Republikan Party.
Don’t you mean “business as usual in politics”? Or do you aspire to spending your whole life as a partisan hack?
Uh, Mike – is that your partisan defense of Republican hacks?
Most observers of American politics note this event as another qualitative increase in sleaze that matches the last 12 years of so of Republican domination of Congress.
During his two terms in office Bill Clinton appointed 123 US Attorneys. He asked for resignations from all 93 in the first term and then replaced some of his own appointments as time went on. George Bush has appointed 128. He replaced most (not all) of the 93 in his first term and then the rest later. I guess the San Diego prosecutor did not want to prosecute immigration cases. Well. who sets the policy….. Atty General or person who works for Atty. General?
Uh, god – I didn’t defend anybody, I criticized the suggestion that political retribution is politics as usual for just Republicans. We can go to any major city in this country and find examples of sleazy politics from the party in control, as with all fifty statehouses. How could we expect Washington to be any different, when there is much more power to be had there? And lest we forget what finally caused the 1994 Republican take over of the democratic control of the Congress in the first place. If you honestly believe that either of those parties is any more or less corruptible than the other, you are as big a fool as Eideard.
I bet $20 you couldn’t even guess who I voted for in the last two general elections.
From the New York Times:
ATTORNEY GENERAL SEEKS RESIGNATIONS FROM PROSECUTOR
ZeOverMind, tinyurl in your friend. Posting excerpts instead of the whole article is also nice.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Post_Office_Scandal
Congressional Post Office Scandal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ultimately, Rostenkowski was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, in 1995.
President Clinton later pardoned Rostenkowski as he left office in 2001.
Ah k… will do in the future. Of course the NYT requires one to register to read content – waste of time IMO.
When clinton took office he fired the ENTIRE group of US Attorneys.
What’s unusual is that Bush didn’t when he took office. kind of odd that he’s doing it now though.
Hacks,
In your faux anger you’ve missed the more interesting story: Bush considered firing ALL of the US Attorneys two years ago.
Hacks you say? Who’s more guilty of political hackery? The person who points out that this is Business as usual in Washington DC or the person who claims that this is “Business as usual in the Republikan Party”?
It’s standard policy for an incoming president to appoint all his own USAs. Clinton did it in 1993, Bush did it in 2001. The Republicans know this, but are dishonestly trying to pretend that this latest round is the same as those. It is not. These are BUSH APPOINTED REPUBLICAN USAs who didn’t toe the party line quite enough, so they’re gone. Standard operating procedure for the sleazy Bush administration.
Of course they’re Bush appointed US Attnys. These officials are appointed for four years, although I wouldn’t go so far tho as to label them “Republican”
Andrew C. McCarthy has an interesting article about the firings:
The Pot Calling the Kettle “Interim”
Democrats with short memories rail about Bush’s removal of U.S. attorneys.
http://tinyurl.com/2sxlra
Gonzales Chief Of Staff Rebuts Rove Claim That Clinton Purged Prosecutors Too – http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/13/sampson-rove-attorney
All US Attorneys are political appointees. That means they are nominated by the President and they serve at the pleasure of the President.
What is the issue? In this constitutional democracy, this is the way we set things up.
If they get their jobs through political means, what is the problem with them loosing their jobs through political means?
There are plenty of serious issues in this world, this one is a curiosity and nothing more.
#11 – The person that misses the real story in an effort to squawk about a fairly meaningless story.
what’s the issue? the effing issue is that at least some of them were pressured to bring political prosecutions and were fired when they didnt!
US Attorneys have a huge amount of discretionary power. It has been noted that they could indict a potted plant. to politicize their activities is to lend a certain third world-ish, or even Russian-style, element to the justice system of the United States.
that’s it – Banana Republicans!
#16 – The Real Story here is that this is not a “real story”. It’s not a scandal and it’s not against the law. The Whitehouse is fully within it’s political jurisdiction to fire these US attorneys. 2 years to go to the next Presidential election and the Democrats want to create as much political hysteria as possible. So the US attorneys didn’t followup on prosecuting voter fraud in key electoral states. If the “boss” doesn’t like your work they get fired. And unlike the civil service there is no due process for firing political appointees. The difference between the Bush Administration is that they didn’t axe all of the Clinton appointees in 2000 compared to Clinton’s firing of the all of the previous 2 administrations appointees. And I’m sure as political hindsight goes, they are regretting that decision because those appointees haven’t been doing the jobs that they wanted done.
With the Democrats trying to make this into a “scandal” the end result will be that future Administrations (be it Democrat or Republican) won’t make the same “mistake” as the Bush Administration made by keeping appointees from previous administrations, they’ll be sure to fire all of them from the start to make sure future appointees will be of a proper idealogical bias.
#16. So, if it is not a ‘scandal’ and just partisan business as usual, why did Grand Inquisitor Alberto Gonzales throw his top aide under the bus?
Sorry I wasn’t around to “edit” earlier.
Folks – use tinyurl or learn to summarize.
Oh yeah, Sunderland 2 – 2 Stoke City
Well lets deconstruct the reasons why:
1) the Administration is a lame duck.
2) the Administration is on the defensive of an unpopular war of it’s own making.
3) the Democrats coming out of the November elections are doing everything they can to keep the momentum going to a possible presidential victory in 2008
4) in the midst of more unflattering press the Administration is doing the politically expediant move of blaming a political subordinate.
5) the political subordinate knowing full well his designated role as the political sacrificial lamb takes responsibility and resigns.
Unfortunately for the administration, this probably won’t be enough to satisfy the media sharks because they smell blood in the water and are still working themselves up into a media feeding frenzy. So expect more smoke, some heat, lots of noise but no fire.
I remember when Janet Reno fired all of the prosecutors during the Clinton administration… It wasn’t a big deal then either.
Zeovermind,
I’ll lay it out for you as simple as possible.
1 Bush fired all Clinton appointees. One, in the middle of a case, was retained until the case finished.
2 It is a Federal offense to interfere, threaten, bribe, or intimidate a Federal Attorney in the course of their duties.
3 All prosecuting attorneys are expected to be immune from interference of any kind.
4 All prosecuting attorneys have absolute immunity from any civil damages. In return they must enforce the law impartially and fairly.
5 It is Clinton’s fault because these US Attorneys were fired because they didn’t heed to political demands set by the Bush Administration.
6 It is unprecedented to fire a Federal Attorney because of politics.
7 No matter what evidence you present to exonerate Bush, he has screwed over the American public so much that anything he and his administration does can not be forgiven. He is a lying sack of crap that the majority of Americans want to see gone.
#17,
that’s it – Banana Republicans!
I am really glad I wasn’t drinking my coffee when I read that. There are enough stains on my key board as it is. Excellent quip. I rank it right up there with neo-coward. I hope you won’t mind if I use that in the furure.
#6. It is not so very much unprecedented – after all Nixon fired Archie Cox. Not a precedent I would care to cite if I was Dubya, though 😉
#24. certainly!
14 – Joe – That’s fascinating, because what Karl Rove said has been exactly echoed by the usual Bush apologists here at DU. Either they are mimicking Rove directly (gawd what a political model to take!) or both Rove and the usual DU suspects are reading the same Republicrat talking points. Is there some central teat where these people take their ideological nourishment? There certainly doesn’t seem to be any original thought.
It’s interesting that as usual the Democrats have allowed the Republicrats to control the discussion and focus it on a New Mexico election dispute (as if the neo-cons have any high ground there). In San Diego, the fired fed – Carol Lam – prosecuted Duke Cunningham for tax evasion and conspiracy, and was starting a related case against former CIA executive director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes.
Anybody else detect the stink of political revenge and an attempt to cover up an obvious can of worms? For the whole story of political interference with federal prosecutions, as reported in a right-wing Copley chain newspaper, see http://tinyurl.com/37rax9 (if the bug diverts that from the San Diego Union, make sure the final three characters are “ax9” – lower case “x”).
Fusion just because you think he’s committed a crime doesn’t make it so.
As Andrew McCarthy said in his column (i’ll repost the excerpts here because Eideard cutted my last posts).
The Pot Calling the Kettle “Interim”
Democrats with short memories rail about Bush’s removal of U.S. attorneys.
http://tinyurl.com/2sxlra
Indeed, a moment’s reflection on the terms served by U.S. attorneys reveals the emptiness of Feinstein’s argument. These officials are appointed for four years, with the understanding that they serve at the pleasure of the president, who can remove them for any reason or no reason. George W. Bush, of course, has been president for six years. That means every presently serving U.S. attorney in this country has been appointed or reappointed by this president.
That is, contrary to Clinton, who unceremoniously cashiered virtually all Reagan and Bush 41 appointees, the current President Bush can only, at this point, be firing his own appointees. Several of them, perhaps even all of them, are no doubt highly competent. But it is a lot less unsavory, at least at first blush, for a president to be rethinking his own choices than to be muscling out another administration’s choices in an act of unvarnished partisanship.
I rarely Comment; but, I can’t watch the zforce crap continue w/o saying something – like did you read the article or any of the other several hundred out and about?
No one’s complaining about a President’s right to replace US Attorneys – especially when starting from scratch. But, when requests are made to remove your own appointees because they’re not prosecuting enough cases against the other political party, you violate the ethical and legal standards of the office of Federal Attorney.
That’s why even a dork like Domenici in New Mexico has rushed out to get himself a serious DC lawyer. He knows he screwed up. You don’t. But, he does.
#27, Zeoutofhismind
I don’t give a crap what what Andrew McCarthy said. I have never heard of him and I have no idea what his credentials are. If he has some special authority then please post those, because until then he is just another hack flapping his opinionated jaws.
If you can’t use your brain and come up with your own thoughts, please, spare the rest of the readers. If I want to read right wing nut opinionated armpits, I know where I can find lots. Cite facts, write opinions. Don’t cite opinions and write nothing.
The issue is how serious are the voter fraud cases in New Mexico? If this is just Domenici being a bully, then this guy shouldn’t have been fired. But if the fraud is real, then it makes sense to put pressure for more prosecutions. Such prosecutions after voting are a minimum first step tog etting the voting systems fixed.