CNN:No charges in firing of 9 U.S. attorneys during Bush years

[Ax]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/21/us.attorneys/index.html?hpt=Sbin

The Justice Department says it has decided not to charge former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other Bush administration officials in the controversial firings of nine U. S. attorneys, according to a letter sent to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Special counsel Nora Dannehy investigated the firings and Attorney General Eric Holder "has accepted her recommendation that criminal prosecution is not warranted," the letter said.

In the letter, Associate Attorney General Ronald Welch said Gonzales made "inaccurate and misleading" statements about the firings. The report also said Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, also made misleading statements. But the report by Dannehy concluded there was "insufficient evidence to establish that persons knowingly made material false statements" or tried to obstruct justice.

A sad day in Bushisthedebilville.

[DjTj]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/21/us.attorneys/index.html?hpt=Sbin

A sad day in Bushisthedebilville.

A happy day in Obamacandowhateverhewantsbecauseheispresidentville.

[SnyderShrugged]

Hmmm, I assumed this was determined long ago?

[Larry]

I don't recall anybody even attempting to claim that what they did was illegal.

Despicable. Dishonest. Political. (OK. Given the third one, the first two are redundant.)

But illegal? I don't recall anybody even attempting to claim that.

[twa]

Obviously someone(more like a number of someones ) thought so to appoint Special counsel Nora Dannehy to look into it.

Surely you remember it being used as a talking point?

[Larry]

Obviously someone(more like a number of someones ) thought so to appoint Special counsel Nora Dannehy to look into it.

Surely you remember it being used as a talking point?

Oh, I clearly remember people being outraged by it.

They should be. It was a despicable, deplorable act of a political party attempting to use federal law enforcement powers as a means of trying to create political scandals.

(It's possible that this investigation is an example of the same thing. Although the fact that this investigation doesn't seem to have been publicized makes me wonder.)

My point was that I don't recall anybody saying it was illegal.

[twa]

Oh, I clearly remember people being outraged by it.

They should be. It was a despicable, deplorable act of a political party attempting to use federal law enforcement powers as a means of trying to create political scandals.

(It's possible that this investigation is an example of the same thing. Although the fact that this investigation doesn't seem to have been publicized makes me wonder.)

My point was that I don't recall anybody saying it was illegal.

Going senile?

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers was very vocal about it and still claims illegality

[Larry]

Going senile?

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers was very vocal about it and still claims illegality

1) Going?

2) I don't suppose the guy has ever said exactly which law he claims was broken? (Although, thinking about it, I wonder if "obstruction of justice" could be stretched enough to cover that.)

[twa]

Here have fun:silly:

http://judiciary.house.gov/news/090113_1.html

[Predicto]

These are the guys who got fired so the Bush Justice Department could replace them with idealogue conservative attorneys like J. Christian Adams - the guy who now claims to be a "whistleblower" on the New Black Panthers case.

Fascinating stuff.

[Burgundy Burner]

Whistleblowers were the greatest invention ever - until recently.

[Predicto]

Whistleblowers were the greatest invention ever - until recently.

They are still great.

Problem with Adams is that he admits that he doesn't actually have any smoking gun information, just his own personal impression that he should have been allowed to prosecute the case. The Right is calling him a whistleblower, but he doesn't have a whistle.

[Burgundy Burner]

People in this area will disagree with you. I thought about driving over to Philly that day to see the spectacle. Not worth the trouble though.

[Larry]

These are the guys who got fired so the Bush Justice Department could replace them with idealogue conservative attorneys like J. Christian Adams - the guy who now claims to be a "whistleblower" on the New Black Panthers case.

Fascinating stuff.

Actually, I think you're mistaken.

Just a quick search, but what I see is that he worked for the Voting Rights section of DoJ.

(His bio on Wikipedia is a hoot.)

If I remember correctly, the way the Bush Administration politicized those jobs was by changing the DoJ's hiring rules so that career, civil service, positions were appointed by political appointees, instead of being hired based on merit.

(Not to be confused with the "Bi-Partisan Civil Rights Commission", which consists of six Republicans and two Democrats, despite the federal law which makes it illegal to appoint more than four people from one political Party. Which they got around by having Republican members announce that they'd suddenly become independent (less than a year after being delegates to the Republican National Convention), and therefore they could appoint a Republican to replace a departing Democrat.)

Whereas the fired prosecutors were outright political appointees, who were fired because, once they were appointed, they weren't as political as the White House wanted them to be.

[Landryslegend]

A happy day in Obamacandowhateverhewantsbecauseheispresidentville.

An even better day in ohnohecantheismerelyapublicSERVANTandwethepeoplearehisbossandarefixingtothrowthefatherlessbumoutonhisazzalongwiththeotherlibtardsVILLE.

[Larry]

And, BTW,

I think the NBP guy should have been prosecuted.

I'm willing to defer to Predicto's expertise when he says it would have been a very tough case to prosecute. But I'll freely admit that my non-lawyer gut says he's a criminal.

[Predicto]

Actually, I think you're mistaken.

Just a quick search, but what I see is that he worked for the Voting Rights section of DoJ.

Oh, I wasn't saying that Adams was actually one of the replacements for these 9 particular guys that got fired. My bad for giving that impression.

I meant that Adams was typical of the ideological guys the Bush administration stuffed into DOJ. He was personally hired by Brad Schlozman himself to the Civil Rights division in 2005.

[Predicto]

And, BTW,

I think the NBP guy should have been prosecuted.

I'm willing to defer to Predicto's expertise when he says it would have been a very tough case to prosecute. But I'll freely admit that my non-lawyer gut says he's a criminal.

I agree he probably is a criminal, and he will probably get nailed some day.

Nevertheless, the bruhaha over the New Black Panthers case is a tempest in a teapot, being stirred by Fox. Here's what a conservative republican who just stepped down from the US Civil Rights commission said about the case:

A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.

But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department’s handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party — a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months — Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.

“This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.

“My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president,” Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.

.....

Thernstrom, who had openly mocked the commission’s hearing on the case, put her dissent in writing last week in National Review, where she said the incident was “racial theater of very minor importance” and “small potatoes.”

And other conservatives have weighed in on her side.

“There are more important issues to go after Attorney General Holder on even in terms of the voting rights section itself,” said Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, who was staff director of the Civil Rights Commission in the Reagan years and called the video “damning” but relatively minor.

“Because it’s 24-hour news and cable news and Fox News — this is the kind of story, like the ACORN story, that’s got pictures that you can run over and over again,” said Chavez, who noted that she’s a Fox News contributor.

....

“When it comes to race, the right, like the left, can't resist getting hung up with trivia and sideshows,” said Amy Wax, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of an influential book arguing that discrimination against blacks is no longer very meaningful. “How do the antics of these two Black Panthers make a difference?”

A leading writer on the widely read HotAir marveled at Fox’s eagerness to offer a platform to the New Black Panther Party’s ranting chairman, Malik Shabazz, crediting it to the fact that the “outrageous outrage he provokes is good for ratings and partly because, as here, his demagoguery necessarily casts the host in the role of Spokesman for Decency."

And Doug Mataconis of the conservative blog Outside the Beltway called the flap “much ado about very, very little.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39861.html

[twa]

I agree he probably is a criminal, and he will probably get nailed some day.

Nevertheless, the bruhaha over the New Black Panthers case is a tempest in a teapot, being stirred by Fox. Here's what a conservative republican who just stepped down from the US Civil Rights commission said about the case:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39861.html

I would agree with that and the portion below

the incident was “racial theater of very minor importance” and “small potatoes.”

And other conservatives have weighed in on her side.

“There are more important issues to go after Attorney General Holder on even in terms of the voting rights section itself,” said Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, who was staff director of the Civil Rights Commission in the Reagan years and called the video “damning” but relatively minor.

It is not a matter of great consequence or real harm ....and there are many more important problems with Holder's reign at Justice :evilg:

[Tarpon75]

Oh, I clearly remember people being outraged by it.

They should be. It was a despicable, deplorable act of a political party attempting to use federal law enforcement powers as a means of trying to create political scandals.

(It's possible that this investigation is an example of the same thing. Although the fact that this investigation doesn't seem to have been publicized makes me wonder.)

My point was that I don't recall anybody saying it was illegal.

I haven't taken the time to verify it but I was told Clinton did the same thing when he became pres.Actually there were many more firings by Clinton,or so I am told.

[Tarpon75]

A happy day in Obamacandowhateverhewantsbecauseheispresidentville.

delete post

[Larry]

I haven't taken the time to verify it but I was told Clinton did the same thing when he became pres.Actually there were many more firings by Clinton,or so I am told.

And you were deliberately lied to.

Every President pretty much replaces all of the federal prosecutors when he first takes office. It's part of forming the new administration. They replace all of them.

(In fact, I think that the way it works is that, when appointed, the new prosecutor fills out a letter of resignation, dated four years from now. That way, when the next administration comes in, the previous administration's prosecutors don't get fired by the new boss. The new boss simply accepts their resignations.)

However, once appointed, it's very rare for a prosecutor to be removed, by the President who appointed him.

(I think that Clinton got rid of one. One prosecutor who was investigating Whitewhater. Clinton then appointed a replacement prosecutor, who also investigated Whitewhater. But he conveniently didn't appoint the replacement until after the election, thus keeping the investigation out of the papers until after the election.)

Bush, I believe, was the first one to get rid of large numbers of prosecutors which he had appointed. This move was unprecedented enough that he actually had several people working on how to cover it.

One of the ways they discussed to try to hide it, was to announce that when he began his second term, that this was like a new President taking over, and therefore it's "normal" for him to fire all of the prosecutors, and then re-hire all of them but the ones he wanted to get rid of.

----------

What the spin machine told you was take the facts that:

1) Clinton replaced all of the prosecutors when he took office.

2) Bush replaced all of the prosecutors when he took office.

3) Bush then replaced nine of the prosecutors which he had appointed.

And then loudly and repeatedly tell you that "If you intentionally ignore fact #2, then you can pretend that Bush is just doing something that Clinton did even more of."

[twa]

A legal choice (clearly fully within W's discretion) resulted in this circus and waste of time/money.

Nothing better to do?

[HailGreen28]

Isn't the whole idea of appointing U.S. attorneys solely on political grounds, disgusting?

[Larry]

Isn't the whole idea of appointing U.S. attorneys solely on political grounds, disgusting?

I could see it argued both ways. To argue the other way, is there something wrong about the Attorney General being appointed? (I could see that being argued both ways, too.)