"Performance" Or "Politics"?
(CBS)
Even before he testified this morning on Capitol Hill, D. Kyle Sampson, the now-deposed chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was explaining to us in his own words precisely why we all are making too big a deal out of the decision last year by the White House and Justice Department to fire eight U.S. Attorneys. “Politics,” “job performance,” it all amounts to the same thing, Sampson told us, and anyway, he added, since all federal prosecutors serve “at the pleasure of the President” the executive branch never really needs a reason in the first place to fire them at will.
More specifically, Sampson argues that a federal prosecutor's job performance is necessarily determined in part by her political fealty to the administration that appointed her. So, the argument goes, a U.S. Attorney can be deemed to be below certain professional performance standards if that prosecutor is not going along with the administration's political priorities even if she is otherwise doing a great job of helping enforce existing federal laws. This is a devastatingly short-sighted position for any executive branch official to take and the Congress (and the nation's community of lawyers and judges, for that matter) should reject it immediately.
Why? Because if Sampson’s argument carries the day U.S. Attorneys all over the country will lose whatever remaining appearance of political and partisan objectivity and neutrality they continue to possess. If you judge federal prosecutors more by their loyalty to Washington--nothing wrong with that, say Sampson and Company--you necessarily judge them less by their adherence to the rule of law and by their responsibilities as tribunes of the federal legal system. This changed calculus would be ruinous to the way federal law is enforced-- and just as importantly the perception of how it is enforced. It’s no wonder that current federal prosecutors blasted the Attorney General yesterday during a private meeting.
Every federal investigation and indictment would promptly become subject to politically-motivated criticism which now only occurs in a small fraction of cases. U.S. Attorneys would lose their "above-the-fray" stature that they still most hold in their communities. Right now federal prosecutors act as a legal and ethical bulwark—a check and balance—between you and me on the one hand and the awesome power of the government on the other. They are not supposed to be mere instruments of political will. They are supposed to exercise independent judgment to determine which people and corporations ought to be investigated and indicted and which should not—decisions which by their definition are not supposed to be political.
Sampson and others who propound the "unitary theory" of executive power-- which posits that all power within the executive branch of government ought to lie with the president-- are now trying to implement this theory to the realm of federal prosecutors. The defense now from Sampson (and the Justice Department) isn't that the firings were justified by the work the U.S. Attorneys actually did—an argument that would make sense to the vast majority of Americans—but by the larger argument that federal prosecutors as a whole now ought to be more beholden to the president's partisan priorities than they are to current reach of federal law.
It is a daring argument that no White House has made and acted upon before-- not Ronald W. Reagan's White House, not George H.W. Bush's White House and not even Richard M. Nixon's White House. That’s why today is a big day, not just for Sampson but for the rest of us, too.
No, it doesn't, because Federal Attorneys belong to the ADMINISTRATIVE BRANCH of the government, not the Judicial. You have to take what Cohen says with a grain of salt. He is a Democrat first, and an attorney second.
--- Ummm, so now we have FOUR branches of goverment, instead of the three described in the Constitution (Legislative, Executive, Judicial)?
Nice try. But I think you're a plant -- just posting B.S. here in the hopes that people will believe you.
JEEZ! HOW MANY TIMES do we have to hear that same tired old argument?! Anyone who knows anything about the U.S. government knows that it is customary to replace all US Attorneys AT THE BEGINNING OF A NEW PRESIDENT'S TERM.
The whole reason that this particular firing is even a story is that, in the middle of Bush's second term, GONZALES FIRED ONLY THE ONES THAT WERE PROSECUTING REPUBLICANS, then lied his kiester off when he got caught.
The really interesting question is -- what is he trying to cover up? But that question is getting lost in the cloud of disinformation coming out of this corrupt administration and its monumentally dishonest PR-machine.
But of course, the person who posted that question isn't really a poster, but a plant, who's getting paid by some PR machine to go around posting that same inane question on every comments-section that discusses this topic.
Yes, you did miss it. It was written loudly between the lines. You should know that when political hacks testify before Congress, they rarely -- if ever -- say anything they mean directly.
And fact that you're pretending to be objective while ignoring the meaning of what's going on is insulting to everyone who reads this.
'Bot.
If you really want an aswer to that question, read the rest of the thread and quit qasting space here.
Or are you an internet 'bot, a program that reposts as often as it can in an attempt to snag the top comment in this thread?
I think I know.
Clinton was impeached for lying about ***. What is more obscene is that 3200 young men and women have died over a lot of lies, 3200 facts that America seems indifferent to. Look at Pat Tillman's case. Look at Walter Reed. Talk to any of the estimated 300,000 Iraq veterans with PTSD who can't get treatment due to underfunded VA centers.
Putting Gonzales on the hot seat is not a "witch hunt." There are a lot of "servants" in the Executive branch whose dark deeds need illumination.
The "knuckle-dragging American public", as one obvious right-winger put it, still cares about it's own and why they are still dying in a war for no apparent reason (other than oil). Has anyone mentioned the strategy that we have to "train the Iraqi's to stand up before we can stand down" lately? Funny, that reason for still being in Iraq, as well as so many before it, went away pretty quickly.
The rubber stamp Congress had its day. Bush, Cheney and Rove's attempts to intimidate everyone who disagree with them, even his appointed staff and attorneys is finally having its comeuppance.
When will impeachment be put back on the table?
I want to respond to jdotchin. I met a Conservative Christian man recently who said, "I won't be happy until we wipe every Moslem off the face of the earth." He was disturbingly serious. He and "Radical Islamists" are identical twins, seeing the other as the real villain whom God really hates.
Whether Bush did it, Clinton did it, Reagan did it, or they all did it doesn't make it right. Indeed, even having the nominal authority under the Constitution to discharge US attorneys doesn't make it right to do so.
It is always wrong to abuse power for the sake of politics. And yet, all eleven presidents who have served during my lifetime have done so. And each one of them does it more than his predecessor.
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by sanfelz
March 30, 2007 4:02 PM PDT
- Previous to the Patriot Act, the president could fire any US attorney, and appoint a different person with the advise and consent of the Senate. The Patriot Act changed that giving the executice branch affective control of the judiciary. That is too much power for one branch of government over the others. This administration pushes the limits of the constitution until constraints on power of thbe excutive branch have no meaning.
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