Obama Should Clean House at Justice

[BlueJessamine]

by Dan Abrams

Bush took firing U.S. Attorneys to a whole new level so it would be poetic justice if President Obama purged the DoJ.

It should be one of the earliest and easiest decisions for President Obama. But don't count on it.

Next week, the new president should immediately ask all 93 U.S. attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in the country, to resign. If they refuse, fire them. Many of those prosecutors will have been honest, hardworking, apolitical public servants. And yet they should still get the boot.

What? Isn't that to repeat the partisan sins of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzalez improperly seeking to stack the legal decks by firing U.S. Attorneys whose politics they don't appreciate? Isn't it precisely the sort of politicization of the Justice Department that people like me decried for months? Nope. It's the remedy.


After eight years of making obscenity and adult pornography the Justice department priority at the expense of pursuing hardened criminals, it's time to redirect and thoroughly disinfect the tattered department. Attorney General nominee Eric Holder had this to say about the DoJ a year ago: "There is a crisis of confidence that the nation has with regard to the department." Okay, so why not start anew when he takes charge?

It's hardly radical to suggest that Obama replace these political appointees. Bill Clinton did it. So did Bush. But it's also not even remotely hypocritical to recognize the basic difference between the Bush team firing eight U.S. Attorneys because they had the audacity to retain their independence and refused to allow the administration to manipulate them, and a new President making a broad decision to name all new political appointees to new terms. One is corrupt, the other is, well, politics. (Assuming there is such a distinction at all.)

~snip~

Others have suggested that U.S. attorneys handling certain high profile cases, particularly political ones, should complete those cases to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Maybe. But most important, this new administration should not refuse to act for fear some might unjustly compare them to Gonzo's gang. Just because the Justice Department became "Bush League," doesn’t mean Obama has to start out in the legal minors.

As for those fearless advocates kicked to the curb? Shed no tears, even in this economic environment they will be quickly snapped up by law firms or businesses seeking to pay them many multiples of their comparatively paltry government salaries (and some of them won't be worth it.)

So with all of this in mind, how would Obama position this sort of "radical" move? Ummm, maybe something like, "change you can believe in"?

Article is here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-16/obama-should-clean-house-at-justice/

Alabama is Exhibit A when it comes to evidence that illustrates the ways corrupt U.S. attorneys can harm the cause of justice.

by Legal Schnauzer

http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2009/01/don-siegelman-bob-riley-and-impact-of.html

Why Were These U.S. Attorneys Fired?

by Adam Zagorin TIME Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1597085,00.html

Patrick Fitzgerald violated the rules with pretrial publicity: Governor's lawyers want Fitzgerald tossed from case

by Mike Robinson
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2009/01/08/breaking_news/doc4966b1d74f6ba909437674.txt

Former DOJ Civil Rights Official Apologizes For Racist Email

by Kate Klonick
http://washingtonindependent.com/25836/25836

Schumer asks Holder about voting rights, referring to the Civil Rights Division under Bradley Scholzman as "more like a campaign headquarters than the Department of Justice,"

by Adam Serwer
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_name=cleaning_up_the_civil_rights_d

Bush’s Politics-First Justice Department Has a New Poster Boy

by truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090113_bushs_politics-first_justice_department_has_a_new_poster_boy/?ln

Bush appointee saw Justice lawyers as 'commies,' 'crazy libs,' report says

by L.A.Times
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueJessamine/172

" SPECIAL COVERAGE: The GOP's ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Hoax "

by The Brad Blog
http://www.bradblog.com/?page_id=6500

[NJmaverick]

1. This is one action (that will not enjoy bipartisan popularity) that Obama must take

The Bush regime has poisoned and destroyed this important part of our government. Nothing short of a major overhaul, can possibly save it.

[BlueJessamine]

2. Paul Krugman chimes in:

In yesterdays New York Times Krugman wrote an opinion piece about an inquest into what happened during the Bush years;
an excerpt:

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.

At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally reserved nonpolitical positions for “right-thinking Americans” — their term, not mine — and there’s strong evidence that officials used their positions both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute Democratic politicians.

The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the occupation of Iraq — an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to national security — in which applicants were judged by their politics, their personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job.

link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16krugman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink


The politicalization and corruption at the Department of Justice goes beyond the U.S.Attorneys - on to the Assistant U.S.Attorneys. And probably beyond them.


How many victims of Civil Rights and/or White Collar crimes have been further victimized by the Bush DOJ?

The Department of Justice has failed to investigate many crimes because their priorities have been fighting the war on terror.

Yesterday in his confirmation hearing Eric Holder agreed that America is at war with terrorist and will continue to the fight to keep America safe, as he should. But while the DOJ continues to use FBI Agents to fight the war on terrror, Americans suffer in other areas of the Justice system.



Dan Abrams is right when he says "Fire them all", and perhaps in Obama's Stimulus package and in creating new jobs he should double the size of the Department of Justice.