(Lindsay) Graham: ‘The Fact That Schumer Asked For [Gonzales] To Step Down Means He Won’t’

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/11/graham-gonzales/

Graham: ‘The Fact That Schumer Asked For To Step Down Means He Won’t’

Today on CNN’s Late Edition, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was asked about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. Graham said, “I think the fact that Senator Schumer asked for him to step down means he won’t,” claiming that Schumer’s statement “does interject a little politics here.”

Graham played down the administration’s purge of U.S. Attorneys, calling it perfectly within President Bush’s authority and merely “poorly handled” and “unseemly.” He also repeated Karl Rove’s lie that President Clinton also purged attorneys. “Clinton let them all go when he took over,” Graham said. Watch it at link:

As President Clinton’s former chief of staff (and Center for American Progress President and CEO) John Podesta told us on Friday, Rove’s claim is pure fiction:

Replacing most U.S. attorneys when a new administration comes in — as we did in 1993 and the Bush administration did in 2001 — is not unusual. But the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution.

Transcript:

ROBERTS: Senator Graham, what you do think? Should he?

GRAHAM: I think the fact that Senator Schumer asked for him to step down means he won’t. You know, it does interject a little politics here. But the idea of how these U.S. attorneys were handled is, at best, clumsy.

You know, U.S. attorneys serve at the will of the president, and most of them involved have been there five and six years. But this idea they were fired for a cause seems to me to be unseemly, unnecessary and this whole matter was poorly handled. And that’s all I know to say about it.

I don’t believe the attorney general will resign, but this whole episode was unnecessarily poorly handled, because you can ask any U.S. attorney to leave. That’s the right of the president. Clinton let them all go when he took over, but you don’t need to start attacking people’s reputations unfairly and I think some of that’s been done.

[KoKo]

1. Did you see his questions on C-Span with Fired SP Hearings? He's drunk and he

was slurring his words and acting strange on the CBS Reports. It's getting to Lindsay...the lies, deceit and the vision of his IMPLODING FUTURE! He was INSANE! Made fun joke about how he would be "the last person left in Senate" ... a jibe against all the Repugs Running but when he said he hoped to "serve til I get to be 110 was a tribute to Strom Thurmond.

Lindsay is Imploding. It's all crashing down on his head.

[Skip Intro]

2. The sooner the better - personal time with family right around the corner, I hope.

and good riddance.

[tularetom]

3. Quick - somebody out this MF'er so we won't have to see him anymore

I don't think the good people of whatever Carolina he's from would be too cool with the idea of a gay senator.

[truebrit71]

5. Might be why he's hittin' the booze...someone has pictures and they're blackmailing him...

..you know, 'get up there and defend us, or the world is gonna see you a WHOLE different light..."

[cboy4]

4. Did he refer to us as the

"Democrat Party" like he did last weekend on Meet the Press?? :crazy:

He's such a nitwit.