U.S. Attorney Lam announces resignation

[Rose Siding]

snip>
“It has been both a great honor and a great privilege to have served the nation and the Southern District of California as United States attorney for the past 4½ years,” {Lam} said in a statement.
...
In her statement issued midafternoon Tuesday, Lam did not address whether she was asked to resign.

Her spokeswoman said in an e-mail that “there will be no further comment today.”

Kevin V. Ryan, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, also announced his resignation Tuesday.

....U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales bristled at the suggestion by Democratic senators that the Justice Department's request for the resignations was politically motivated or intended to circumvent the Senate confirmation process.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Gonzales told The Associated Press.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070116-1631-bn16lam.html

[spotbird]

1. The truth,

what a pathetic excuse for a human.

[acmavm]

2. Yeah, I'll just take your word for it Gonzo, Your track record

of honesty, integrity, and working knowledge of the Constitution speaks for itself.

[MindPilot]

3. (Cunningham prosecutor) Lam to resign Feb. 15 as speculation swirls

Some see politics at play in ouster of U.S. attorney
By Onell R. Soto and Kelly Thornton
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS
January 17, 2007

San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam announced yesterday that she is resigning effective Feb. 15, but she wouldn't say whether she was asked to leave.

U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is one of at least eight top prosecutors who have resigned or been told to.
“It has been both a great honor and a great privilege to have served the nation and the Southern District of California as United States Attorney for the past four and one-half years,” she said in a statement.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Friday that Lam was asked to resign because of decreasing prosecutions in gun and immigration matters. Lam declined to comment over the next few days and has turned down repeated interview requests.

Lam resisted the push out the door, said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, a longtime critic who said she should have prosecuted many more immigration cases.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070117-9999-1n17lam.html

[msongs]

4. she should REFUSE to resign...

then again maybe she is protecting her retirement scheme for personal self interest reasons

principle + attorneys, is there such a thing?

Msongs
www.msongs.com

[natrat]

6. oh yea and get suicided

[Warpy]

5. They're scared to death of the Cunningham mess

because it has the possibility of opening up a huge can of worms regarding defense contractors, government giveaways for bogus contracts being laundered back into fat campaign contributions, bribery at all levels of the GOP, and racketeering at a level this country has never seen before.

Brent Wilkes's name and his Mirror Corporation have already gotten quite a bit of coverage in the blogosphere, and that weasel is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Most of the men laundering taxpayer dollars into RNC campaign funds are less clumsy and less noticeable than he is.

This is why there's a bloodbath among honest prosecutors in California. This is the RNC protecting itself and its many rackets.

[Botany]

7. Bingo .....

not only have we been enriching republican defense contractors and
corrupting the political process but the Dept. of Defense's use of
contracts have been a very good way to launder money and get "kick backs"
to the RNC and it's entities.

If you get a chance look @ "The Lincoln Group," when you get a chance.

[rodeodance]

8. She was a Bush appointee (who fell out of favor)

[donkeyotay]

9. "Lam resisted the push out the door," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-vista,

one of the people who would potentially benefit from having a broad investigation squelched.

[donkeyotay]

10. Tpmmukraker says it was Arlene Specter who added the provision

"I can confirm for you that yes, it was a Specter provision," a spokesperson for the senator wrote to me in an email earlier today, responding to repeated inquiries. Earlier we reported that Specter had been fingered for the last-minute change, made in a select Republicans-only meeting after the House and Senate had voted on earlier versions....

The senator made no public comment on the provision at the time of the bill's passage. A congressional report which accompanied the final version of the bill said that Specter's change "addresses an inconsistency in the appointment process of United States Attorneys." It's not clear, however, what exactly that inconsistency was.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002357.php

[knight_of_the_star]

11. U.S. Attorney Lam resigns

SAN DIEGO --Ending days of speculation, San Diego-area U.S. Attorney Carol Lam announced Tuesday afternoon in a news release that she will step down from the job on Feb. 15. News stories first surfaced last week that she had been asked to resign, but no government source was willing to go on the record with the information. The release did not provide a reason for Lam's resignation nor did it say if she had been asked to resign. Reached by phone late Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the 47-year-old Lam said that there would be no other comment.

--snip--

Lam, a graduate of Yale University, Stanford Law School and a former San Diego Superior Court judge, is one of several U.S. attorneys being asked to resign, according to news reports. In a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that it was recently brought to her attention that several U.S. attorneys have been asked to resign, some by the end of the month and prior to the end of their terms. She said the resignation requests were not based on any allegation of misconduct. "In other words, they are forced resignations," Feinstein said. She expressed concern that Gonzales plans to appoint interim replacements and "potentially avoid Senate confirmation." A little-known provision in the Patriot Act reauthorization last year changed existing law so that if a vacancy occurs, the attorney general can appoint a replacement for an indefinite period of time.

--snip--

Bersin said that Lam did not have to leave voluntarily. The president "can fire, but the U.S. attorney can take the position that 'There is not sufficient cause and I am not going to resign -- go ahead and fire me and provide a statement of the reasons why,' " Bersin said.

More: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01/17/news/top_stories/1_00_991_16_07.txt

Something doesn't smell right with this, it sounds like a purge is in the wings.

[Double T]

12. This has the rotten stench of the WH smeared ALL OVER IT..........

the corrupt criminal activity continues unchecked.

[Roland99]

13. Bush is on the Lam

Sorry....couldn't resist.


;)