Reno & Gonzales, Apples & Oranges
(CBS)
There is so much disinformation and misinformation floating around cyberspace these days about the firing of eight federal prosecutors that you would almost think people on one side of the debate and the other are writing about and analyzing two completely different stories. Over and over again, supporters of the White House, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, seem to want to compare the current controversy with, especially, the decision by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to dismiss all of the federal prosecutors who had served under his predecessor, George H. W. Bush.
To compare these two episodes is to say that when a dog bites a man it is as newsworthy as when a man bites a dog. The comparison simply doesn’t work. As I have mentioned here before, every incoming president seeks to install into office his crop of federal prosecutors. Republican presidents have done this and so have Democrats and it is such routine that it barely makes any news. Existing federal prosecutors know that, when the president who appointed them leaves office, they had better start updating the resume. Like it or not, this practice is not controversial. It is a rule that has governed the game for decades.
So, please, let’s all stop trying to compare the “Reno 93” with the “Gonzales 8.” Even Republican lawmakers are growing uneasy with that inapt comparison. One legal scholar after another, and one veteran Justice Department watcher after another, has come forward to say that it is extraordinary for a White House to fire a federal prosecutor mid-term, or even mid-presidency, absent some extraordinary misfeasance or malfeasance on the part of the U.S. Attorney. Here is just the latest to do so.
The men and women who were fired by the White House and the Justice Department were not drunkards or dope addicts or bribe-taking sleazebags. They were not legal loose cannons or leftover Hippies from some Democratic administration. They were Republicans and had gotten their jobs in the first place because they had established themselves worthy on both legal and political grounds. Go ahead and read John McKay’s story, eloquently told last night on the Evening News, and then argue that he is not precisely the sort of person who ought to be the bulwark of our federal legal system.
Finally, a word about two sources I used earlier this week as we began this dialogue. Some cyber folks, trying to attack the credibility of eminent professors Stanley Katz and Stanley Kutler, took the time to research their campaign contributions. I do not know, and don’t necessarily care, where the two professors I interviewed choose to spend their money. I do know, however, that when I asked them to name their best and favorite attorneys general, they both picked a Republican. One picked Ed. Levy, President Ford’s attorney general. The other picked President Eisenhower’s attorney general, Herbert Brownell.
As for his right to fire them it is his. The oath they swear is to uphold the nation's laws and the Constitution. In my honest opinion, they should be replaced every two years. Most of them could care less about the Constitution. I think that is who they is trying to get rid and it is their right. By the way, Janet Reno has to have beee the absolute worst attorney general of all time. She ignored the constitution and the bill of rights at any chance she could get. Get rid of attn generals who think the end justifies the means. Only the president was elected and those are employees whom may be fired weather CBS thinks there is precident or not. Can I fire you? Was CBS voted in. I can't remember any good stories from CBS on any republican ever. The CBS editorial news which tried to change the outcome of an election is a far more serious crime than firing an attorney general.
You know where you can stuff your slanted opinion, you jerk.
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2007/03/jon-stewart-explains-department-of.html
This is about our Republican president and his Republican U.S. Attorney General replacing its own Republican State (federal) Attorney Generals in mid-term or mid-presidency is unprecedented or un-heard of. Espcecially following the circumstances of eace case.
If you try to argue otherwise, then I think you are being subjective and not objective. And that rationale could be drawn according to party lines.
Who ever said that it was not within the President's legal power to replace attorneys when he chooses to?
It's nothing new, but it's merely a SUBJECTIVE PARTISAN PRESS ATTEMPT TO FLAME THE PRESIDENT.
If Bill Clinton would have done it, you can bet that the press would COMPLETLY IGNORE IT.
mr. sampson has now been asked to step down.
[thinkprogress.org/2007/03/13/sampson-rove-attorney/]
they should all resign ... and we just start all over ... like it was 1999.
this isn't news ... at least for those who aren't bent by ideology ... and are actually paying attenton. it won't make any difference to their army of apologists. he could be a serial killing pedophile and they'd carry his water.
everyone's too busy watching who's going to win american idol and downloading ringtones to their 'mobile' phone. do you really want to get in the way of that?
now if you have the process for making dilithium crystals ... then maybe you have a shot!
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium_%28Star_Trek%29]
In 2004, the Washington State Governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes - this after three attempts at recounting votes by the state's Democratic Party goofy vote counting department. As has been well documented, some of the "voters" were dead, some were registered at addresses which didn't exist, and others were convicted felons. More than 100 ballots were "discovered" in a Seattle warehouse after the vote counting looked like it might not place the Democrat Governor into office.
None of these facts even sparked the curiosity of Mr. McKay, to investigate a little further.
Another tiny point of fact - the firing of the 'Reno 93' was actually unprecedented in history.
Dan Rather%u2019s penchant for manufacturing facts to fit agendas seems to be alive and well at CBS. Not even Ms. Cuoric's pretty face can distract from your network's inherent bias and deliberate distortions.