Who Would Have Guessed?
Turns out, there were some people of integrity in the Bush administration!
That's John McKay, US Attorney for the Western District of Washington. Oops, make that former US Attorney for the Western District of Washington. Unhappy with the fact that McKay was unwilling to make stuff up in the incredibly close gubernatorial election and find voter fraud where there was no evidence, the DOJ, on instructions from the White House, canned Mr. McKay.
Of course, US Attorneys are political appointments. They serve at the pleasure of the President. They can be fired at any time. That doesn't make it right.
John McKay is a Republican. He was appointed by President Bush. Had the administration just said, "We want to go in a different direction," likely, McKay wouldn't have said anything. But then things started coming out. Like the newly added provision to the Patriot Act that allows the administration to appoint US Attorneys without Senate approval, which drew more attention to the spate of firings. So the administration had to come up with a reason to try and defuse the questioning, and they picked a bad choice. They blamed the firings on performance, and that blew the lid off. Suddenly, those fired Republican US Attorneys weren't going quietly after all.
Now we know that Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, various members of Congress, and President Bush himself got rid of these US Attorneys either because they were prosecuting Republicans (see Carol Lam of San Diego and convicted Representative Duke Cunningham) or failing to make stuff up to prosecute Democrats.
Oh, just politics, you say. Sure, it's politics, but it's also a far cry from democracy when an incumbent administration, without any checks or balances from Congress, can prosecute their opponents and protect their friends. There's a reason those positions required Congressional approval.
