Wednesday, April 11, 2007

I don't really get the whole thing with the U.S. attorneys that Bush fired. People seem upset that he fired political appointees for political reasons. From what I understand, it's basically a tradition for every President to fire the previous President's appointees and get new ones. Isn't that political? If that house cleaning isn't political, then that means that every single US attorney hired by the last few Presidents has really sucked at their jobs. And if that were true, they probably would have changed the process by now. So yes, Bush fired the U.S. attorneys for political reasons. So did Clinton.

That's what I understand about this affair. I don't really think anything else matters, and have no real desire to look further. It seems like yet another nothing incident that the press and Bush's political opponents are pushing to manipulate public opinion. Which makes it ironic. It is purely for political reasons that they are busting Bush's balls for doing something for political reasons.
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Edit...
A few minutes later:

Ok, so I read a little more about it. Before some Patriot Act revision last year, the President could appoint attorneys, but they were just interim until Congress approved. That revision took away the Congressional approval part, so maybe I can see where people think that is a little sketchy. But then Congress had to vote on that revision, so they voted to give up that power to approve. So it's all legal, if sketchy.

On the firing side... When a new President assumes office, traditionally all the attorneys either write letters of resignation, or their terms are scheduled to end at that same time, so the house is cleaned. No, they aren't technically fired by the President, but what else do you call it when all 93 members of a group quit or leave office at the same time? I'm sure what is now a tradition started with some past President wanting to clean house and actually firing them. So in this recent instance, the firings were not upon a new President's assumption of office. In either case, the attorneys are no longer government employees because the President, for political reasons, wanted different ones. An important part of a US attorney's job description: "Serves at the pleasure of the President."

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