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Remember, from a year and a half ago, the U. S. Attorney scandal? (Yes, I know; with so much crap the Bush White House has pulled, how can anyone keep track? Outside of Olbermann; he keeps a list.) Briefly, we had a day or so of coverage of the start of an investigation into the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, most of them well respected and with excellent performance reviews in their files, and fired supposedly for "incompetence". "Incompatibility with the Bush White House agenda" might have been a more honest appraisal; specifically, one David Iglesias of New Mexico, fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, among other Repubs, complained about his handling of "voter fraud", public corruption cases and the like. Basically, IIRC, Iglesias refused to continue and prosecute after initial investigation on voter fraud cases, and public corruption cases against Democrats, saying that no voter fraud or corruption had been found. You can't serve steak if there's none in the market, I don't care how much your bosses want red meat.
You may recall that Alberto Gonzales resigned as a result of the initial reports coming out. Silver lining, and all that.
Well, the Justice Department has, refreshingly, and rather inexplicably for a Bush administration department, heeded the report of its own investigators, Inspector General Glenn Fine and Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility Marshall Jarrett. Mukasey may actually be a (semi-)honest man and not a total Bush hack, after all; he called the firings "haphazard, arbitrary and unprofessional" this morning, according to the WaPo article. He has named Nora Dannehy, acting U. S. Attorney in Conn., with 17 years of experience, as a special prosecutor. The difference, of course, is that the internal Justice Dept. people don't have subpoena power. A special prosecutor does: the review found, according to the stuff breaking on the Web, that there was a possibility that some folks interviewed gave false statements, obstructed justice, and the like, people with names like Domenici, Rove and Miers. And that there was "'substantial evidence' that partisan politics played a role" (quoting from the report on Bloomberg).
Ya think?
This is all breaking stuff, getting posted to "the Google"'s news site as I write. Literally. Stay tuned.
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