Hyper Hacks-What's really wrong with the Bush Justice Department

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2161804/nav/tap1/

Hyper Hacks-What's really wrong with the Bush Justice Department
By Lincoln Caplan
Posted Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Our system of government tries to limit the sway of partisan politics over the law by giving life tenure to federal judges. But it doesn't do the same for the attorney general or the lawyers who work for him. They serve at the pleasure of the president, to whom we grant the legal authority to fire anyone from his team for any reason.

The straightforwardness of this rule helps explain why the Bush administration's firing of seven U.S. attorneys at the beginning of December, plus an eighth last summer, didn't immediately ignite into controversy. But what's come out since then makes clear that this targeted removal of prosecutors was different in kind as well as degree from political dramas at the Department of Justice in prior administrations. In the context of other Bush administration assaults on DOJ lawyers, the U.S. attorney scandal confirms the administration's disdain for the nonpolitical tradition of federal law enforcement.

To be sure, the past practices that embodied this tradition weren't codified. Nor are they legally binding. They're the kind of custom recorded by anthropologists more than legal scholars, and they include many exceptions. Yet they have long governed how federal law-enforcement decisions were made. And they have been sturdy enough to keep in check the president's authority to remove lawyers at will for a generation before the current administration.

The attorney general and the lawyers who work for him represent the administration that picks them. But their client is the United States, and the oath they swear is to uphold the nation's laws and the Constitution. The country's 93 U.S. attorneys transform from political appointees into public servants when they join the Justice Department. Once in place, they gain a significant measure of independence. For most crimes, they have the power to indict without approval from "Main Justice," the Washington, D.C. headquarters. This independence is "vital to ensuring the fair and impartial administration of justice," in the words of Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney who worked in the Justice Department for both Republican and Democratic attorneys general.

The White House and DoJ are now under fire because, in disrespecting the post of U.S. attorney, they appeared to interfere with the independence of that office in a way that's unprecedented. In the previous quarter-century, according to the Congressional Research Service, no more than five and perhaps only two U.S. attorneys, out of 486 appointed by a president and confirmed by the Senate, have been similarly forced out—in the middle of a presidential term for reasons not related to misconduct. "It would be unprecedented for the Department of Justice or the president to ask for the resignations of United States attorneys during an administration, except in rare instances of misconduct or for other significant cause," White said when she testified in February about the Bush firings before much was known about them. Previous midterm removals include those of a Reagan U.S. attorney fired and convicted for leaking confidential information and a Clinton appointee who resigned under pressure after he lost a major drug case and allegedly went to an adult club and bit a topless dancer on the arm. This time, the stories are quite different.

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[benddem]

1. simply stated

the attorney general works for the people of the United States and upholds the laws of the US. This bozo works for Rover and undermines the constitution.