The Three Problems with the Firing of the Attorneys

Boston Globe: Alberto Gonzales Should Go

IT IS customary for newly elected presidents to replace large numbers of US attorneys, especially if the new president is from a different party. It is not customary for presidents to sweep out many of their own appointees to these positions in the middle of their administration.

GDAEman has a post very similar to the two posts previous this one. In his (assuming your not a woman because of the man in GDAEman) comment here, he points out what is the problem.

yea, you're right... similar to my post. The list of abuses makes one feel like this attorney-firing incident is simply the last-straw. However, it's my understanding that what's going on is that the attorney-firing is a direct affront to the Senate because Senators traditionally nominate the US Attorney's for their state and because they are supposed to be able to confirm them.

On the last point, a provision slipped into the USA PATRIOT Act (note all CAPs) allowed the President to install US Attorneys without Senate approval.... of course, most of the senators voted for it.

Which raises another point... Congress routinely votes on big fat bills that they never read. God only knows what laws are on our books thanks to corporate lobbyists.

Thanks for the occasional visit.

The Patriot Act hasn't been mentioned a lot in news stories, but it seems to be part of the problem.

A new letter was released by the Justice Department yesterday. It essentially says "Karl Rove is wondering what's going to happen to Miers's plan to fire all the attorneys "at the beginning of Bush's 2nd term. No matter how much we all dislike Karl Rove, he wasn't a part of this conspiracy.

The three problems with the firings of these attorneys:

• The attorneys were fired in middle of the President's administration
• Congress was lied to about the reasons for the firings
• These attorneys were appointed legally, but only under the illegal provisions of the Patriot Act