Just how much blame must Karl Rove shoulder and how much should George W. over the sackings of eight federal prosecutors?Justice Department officials have acknowledged that former U.S. Attorney H.E. Cummins was booted from his post in Little Rock, Ark., to make room for a former Rove aide. Other fired prosecutors handled politically sensitive investigations that angered Republicans during the run-up to the November elections. Lawmakers in both political parties have expressed concern about evidence of political meddling in the weeks before the November elections, when it was becoming clear that Democrats might take control of Congress for the first time in 12 years.
Although the replacements have been robustly defended, still:
"Nobody who objectively looks at this is going to think, oh, what a coincidence," said former prosecutor Green, now a Fordham University law professor who's on leave at New York University.
This smacks very much of the White House using the Justice Department for its own party political ends. It also smacks of outgoing administrations misusing their authority in the final days. Trouble is, the U.S. already has a constitution to supposedly deal with this sort of thing.
In fairness these posts are patronage positions anyone ( that is their presidenital appointmetns) and Bush is arguablly relatively restrained in keeping on these people so long and only making way to give Republicans cv points latter in his tensure. All but one of the people in these jobs was fired when Clinton became president.
ReplyDeleteA bit of a beat up then, Edmund?
ReplyDelete