Robert Parry: Rise of a Very 'Loyal Bushie' (Consortium News)

[marmar]

If you want to know what the career path of a “loyal Bushie” looks like, let me introduce you to J. Timothy Griffin, a Karl Rove protégé who was slipped into the post of U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, and now is at the center of the controversy over whether the Bush administration has sought to politicize federal prosecutions.

Since college, the 38-year-old Griffin has been following the stations of the cross for a Republican legal/political operative with ambitions to rise to a position of power and influence in a government like the one headed by George W. Bush.

Griffin has pretty much touched them all – the Federalist Society, work for a Clinton-era special prosecutor, the Florida recount battle in 2000, opposition research and voter security duties for the Republican National Committee in Campaign 2004, a brief tour as a military lawyer in Iraq, a deputy in Karl Rove’s political shop at the White House.

But now this carefully groomed Republican operative stands out as Exhibit A for Democrats as they contend that the Bush administration imposed political litmus tests on federal prosecutors who wield enormous power over the lives of those they investigate. A U.S. Attorney not only has wide discretion over normal prosecutions but can tip a political race by either shutting down or starting up a criminal probe.

Beyond being the personification of proof that Bush put political loyalty over legal competence, Griffin has become the test case for the use of new emergency powers in the Patriot Act to circumvent Senate confirmation for U.S. Attorneys.

The administration’s gamble on Griffin was underscored by an e-mail in which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson warned that “there is some risk that we’ll lose the authority, but if we don’t ever exercise it then what’s the point of having it?” .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/032707a.html

[grasswire]

1. I wonder if all the new US attorneys worked in the FL recount

I do know that Paul J. McNulty was a top FIXER in that squabble. Perhaps he brought his most loyal workers there into USA slots.

[blm]

2. undoubtedly - partisanship trumps competence at every level of this administration.

.

[gratuitous]

3. An extraordinarily fecund poisoned tree

Lots of rotten fruit has dropped off those branches.