The US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has been caught out - again. He may have just spun one tall tale too many about the firing of eight federal prosecutors.
All along he's assured Congress that the firings weren't politically driven, they were based on performance problems. New documents released show that it was two sides of the same coin. Yeah, they were canned because they didn't perform politically as required.
"D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, came up with a checklist. He rated each of the prosecutors with criteria that appeared to value political allegiance as much as job performance.
"He recommended retaining 'strong U.S. attorneys who have … exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general.' He suggested 'removing weak U.S. attorneys who have … chafed against administration initiatives.'
The corollary to this, of course, is that the other 87 must have been "strong" attorneys who very willingly accepted the administration's initiatives. With an administration as morally reprehensible as this one, chances are that meant being willing to politicize their prosecutions. That might account for the grossly disproportionate ratio of proceedings against Democrats instead of Republicans and the stunning lack of action on profoundly blatant voter fraud cases in Florida and Ohio. Any way you cut it, that's a perversion of justice for the purposes of partisan advantage, something you once saw in courts in dictatorships.
Maybe George Bush simply doesn't care any more. Everything he's put his hand to has pretty much failed - from Iraq to his Mid-East democracy initiative to his aborted Social Security reform. He's so fouled the American presidency that it may take years for American stature to be rehabilitated. So, what's one Gonzales, more or less in this compendium of incompetence and failure?
That's not to say Congress will agree to leave it at that. They've got Bush bleeding in the water and that inevitably attracts sharks.
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