Redstate

But, as the article points out, there is massive hypocrisy coming from the left, on the issue. Two wrongs don't make a right, but the Dems have a bit of distance to go, when pointing out wrongdoings of their opponents.

The argument isn't that this isn't a scandal, because the Clinton's got away with it. The issue is that ALL US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, and he can fire them whenever he wants, for whatever reason period. President Clinton's firing of all 93 US Attorneys is mentioned because the water carriers for the Democrats in the Senate made no mention of scandal when the Clinton Administration made their move.

Make no mistake, no one, not even the loudest demagogues on the Left, including Mr. Schumer have indicated that the President exceeded his power in dismissing these eight US Attorneys. In fact, Senator Schumer acknowledges that no law was broken, no authority was exceeded.

For those who think that the US Attorney's position should be devoid of political influence, that the insertion of political considerations should not extend to the selection, you are very mistaken. Please note how many existing Senators and politicians proudly use the resume item of "US Attorney" in their campaigns. Rudy Giuliani used it to get elected mayor of New York.

Has anyone looked into the fired, "wronged" US Attorneys? As I recall, at least two failed to investigate real cases of voter fraud, making a political decision. Isn't that cause enough?

"We make war that we may live in peace."
--Aristotle--

When Clinton pardoned Marc Rich he was totally within his powers and it was a total sleaze bag move. There can be a legal scandal.

But this isn't one. You are right that just because something is legal doesn't mean it isn't scandalous, but dismissing people from a job, when they serve there only because you want them to, is not scandalous. The US Attorneys know when they accept that position that it is an "at will" agreement. They could be fired for combing their hair the wrong way - they can find other jobs, maybe jobs that actually have contracts saying they can't be dismissed just because their boss decides he'd rather have someone else there.

"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves."
Ronald Reagan

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
Ronald Reagan

""We should gum this to death," Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. "[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."

In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

See any reason why the two statements might constitute a scandal even if not illegal?

Try this on for size. When Clinton did it it was a scandal because he fired all 93 at once and immediately, which was unprecedented, and because he fired at least two US Attorneys who were involved in active investigations of prominent Democrats, including Clinton himself.

No, you think too small. President Bush sill has a long way to go to reach the Clinton standard.

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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

Ronald Reagan fired all sitting attorneys at the beginning of his term.

Your claim is at odds with this WSJ OpinionJournal article:

At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: "All those people are routinely replaced," he told reporters, "and I have not done anything differently." In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.

Do you have some kind of documentation to support your assertion that Ronald Reagan fired all sitting attorneys at the beginning of his term?

About the truth regarding Reagan and the steps he took in regards to the sitting attorneys the first months of his first inauguration.
While the WSJ op-ed says Reagan did not fire them, Fox News says that

When the party in power changes hands in the White House, it is expected that the new president will fire all the sitting U.S. attorneys, as was the case for both Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Bill Clinton in 1993. President Bush, unlike Clinton and Reagan, did not fire all the attorneys en masse when he took office in 2001, and allowed a few to continue in their positions for several months. All were replaced with his own selections early in his administration, however.

link

If anyone has the right info, please relay it to us, since this is probably the main premise behind this diary and must be clarified.

Ah, you're relying on the AP.

Your FoxNews link actually notes

FOX News' Steve Centanni, Trish Turner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From the Boston Globe, we can see that the AP "analysis" (by Tom Raum, unsurprisingly) is the source of the section you selectively quoted.

Beyond the hit piece by the AP's Tom Raum, do you have some sort of credible evidence that your statement is true and that Reagan fired all of the U.S. attorneys when he took office? Because if that's all you have to rely on, it's smart of you to start moving the goalpost to "no one knows for sure."

I don't really understand what you are trying to say, but I believe this is the weak premise you are using, and correct me if I'm wrong

AP used Jamil Hussein as a source, and he was proven to be real although one US official said his last name was not Hussein, therefore this article is flawed because 1/3 of the contributors work for AP, and all AP reporters lie most of the time.

-You continue to ignore that Gerson, Bush and Clinton appointee and defender of Alberto Gonzales, said that Reagan and Clinton did pretty much the same thing regarding the firing of attorneys.

-You use conservative, Global Warming-denying WSJ, which is caught lying in this same op-ed you mention, about Clinton firing Charles E. Banks because he was investigating Whitewater, when in fact, Banks resisted investigating the Whitewater and told the Justice Department that he thought this prosecution against the Clintons was politically motivated by George Bush Sr. because the 1992 elections were approaching, and that he believed he believed that "no prosecutable case existed against any of the witnesses," most notably the Clintons.

As Banks noted in his report to the Justice Department dated Oct. 16, Barr's desire to expedite the Whitewater investigation smacked of improper political use of the federal judicial system. "I know in investigations of this type," wrote Banks, "the first steps, such as issuance of ... subpoenas ... will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation all too often publicly purport to 'legitimize what can't be proven' ... I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election... For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario and to the possible denial of rights due to the targets, subjects, witnesses or defendants is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy. I cannot be a party to such actions and believe that such would be detrimental to the Department of Justice, FBI, this office and to the President of the United States [George Bush]."

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/02/cov_24news2.html

And I suggest you contact Fox News and ask them why they are using AP as a source. It can't be that Fox thinks AP is reliable, or do they?

Or maybe Salon made this up and Banks never told this to the Justice Department, who knows.

You did an excellent job moving the goalposts ("pretty much the same thing") from your original bold proclamation and introduced a slew of red herrings (the rest of your comment) to boot.

But I don't find any of your little herrings to be very interesting (and wouldn't waste any time arguing about them with someone who relies on Salon for their information, regardless). Nor do I feel like chasing down the goalposts as they move to their new location.

If you do ever find some credible evidence to support your original claim, please do share it though.

I have never seen a case where a media outlet makes up a direct quote from an official. Never, ever.
Are you suggesting that this Salon writer chose to make up a sentence from Banks, enclosing into quotation marks and attribute it to him, falsely claiming he said this to the Dept. of Justice?

And you talk about Red Herring, as if logic fallacies were important to you, but you do not refer to the ad-hominem fallacy of attacking AP's journalist's character instead of directly digging into the content of its claim about Ronald Reagan's handling of the sitting attorney's he fired.
And you also have totally avoided Mr. Gerson's comments about Reagan, which echoed those presented by the AP via Fox News.
The WSJ lied about Clinton firing Banks for political reasons, since there was nothing to fear about Banks, because he thought there was prosecutorial misconduct in the Whitewater case anyway.

Former Atty. General under Clinton was quoted saying that "As I noted earlier, President Clinton replaced all 93 U.S. Attorneys without many permanent candidates to replace them. President Reagan did much the same thing".
link

Before Gerson's comments are dismissed as coming from a Clinton guy, I should have added that besides being attorney during the Clinton administration, Gerson

1)was assistant attorney general in the administration of President George H.W. Bush

2)considers himself friend of W. Bush (See WAPO article)

3)Defended Alberto Gonzales' handling of this issue in his online chat, saying, "It would appear that he lacked certain information (which he acknowledges was not acceptable) but didn't knowingly mislead. I believe him."

4)During the 1988 Presidential election, Mr. Gerson was a senior advisor to the campaign of George H.W. Bush

From his biography: http://www.ebglaw.com/atty_bio_29.htm