Short Memories on U.S. Attorney Dismissals
The U.S. attorneys, the chief federal law enforcement officials in their various districts, typically are appointed to four-year terms by the president on the recommendation of state political leaders, but serve the pleasure of the president and can be dismissed at any time - like the attorney general and other Cabinet officers.
Democrats in Congress have charged that the eight dismissals announced last December were politically motivated and some of those fired have said they felt pressured by powerful Republicans in their home states to rush investigations of potential voter fraud involving Democrats.
Perino said Sampson, the aide Miers contacted, objected that a wholesale change of prosecutors would be disruptive. She also said deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, vaguely recalls telling Miers that he also thought firing all 93 was ill-advised.
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The new revelations Monday evening came after congressional Democrats earlier in the day singled out Rove for questioning about the firings of the eight prosecutors and whether the dismissals were politically motivated.
Those demands to question Rove signaled anew Democrats' shifting focus beyond the Justice Department and toward the White House in the inquiry.
But something quite amazing was omitted by those hard-charging Post reporters Dan Eggen and John Solomon digging through White House E-mails for their scandalized front-page bombshell. Didn’t Bill Clinton’s brand new Attorney General Janet Reno demand resignations from all 93 U.S. attorneys on March 24, 1993? Wouldn’t that fact be relevant to the story? Wouldn’t it have the effect of lessening the oh-my-God hyperbole on the front page if the reader was shown that what Bush did was one-tenth as dramatic as what Team Clinton did? Yes, and yes.
Bush’s attorney general fired eight. Clinton’s fired 93. The media think the eight dismissals were a scandal so massive some have begun calling on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. But they thought the 93 Clinton firings were not worth investigating for the length of a cigarette break. Can a liberal double standard be any more obvious?
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Worse yet, in the middle of this episode of amnesia, ABC brought on George Stephanopoulos – who defended the Clinton firings as the White House spokesman in 1993 – to describe this as an urgent matter putting pressure on Karl Rove to testify before Congress and for Gonzales to resign!
But surely the media gave the Reno order equal, if not ten-fold coverage back in ‘93, right? Think again. ABC never reported it. The New York Times front-page headline yawned: "Attorney General Seeks Resignations from Prosecutors." (At least an editorial the next day blasted Reno’s move as "an odd first step in the wrong direction.")
The Washington Post demonstrated a much richer double standard. While the Post has filed six heavy-breathing front-page stories on their newest Bush scandal, back in 1993, the story was over within a day or two. They reported Janet Reno’s purge on the front page, utterly without suspicion: "The Clinton administration yesterday requested that the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys submit their resignations, a move that likely will mean the quick departure of two figures who have played prominent roles in the politics of the District and Virginia."
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The Post noted mildly that the canned D.C. prosecutor was Jay Stephens, who was right in the middle of investigating corrupt Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the man who was sure to play a major role in passing Hillary’s socialist health-care plan.
Once again we have the Democrat double standard. What's OK for them, is WRONG for you. Yet mindless people keep electing them.
