White House bows on attorney reforms

[wicket]

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

LINK

Slapped even by GOP allies, the Bush administration is beating an abrupt retreat on eight federal prosecutors it fired and then publicly pilloried.

Just hours after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dismissed the hubbub as an "overblown personnel matter," a Republican senator Thursday mused into a microphone that Gonzales might soon suffer the same fate as the canned U.S. attorneys. "One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said during a Judiciary Committee meeting.

A short time later, Gonzales and his security detail shuttled to the Capitol for a private meeting on Democratic turf, bearing two offerings: 1. President Bush would not stand in the way of a Democratic-sponsored bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation. Gonzales' Justice Department had previously dismissed the legislation as unreasonable. 2. There would be no need for subpoenas to compel testimony by five of Gonzales' aides involved in the firings, as the Democrats had threatened. Cloistered in the stately hideaway of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., the attorney general assured those present that he would permit the aides to tell their stories.

The Justice Department is shifting from offense to accommodation.

"In hindsight, we should have provided the U.S. attorneys with specific reasons that led to their dismissal that would have helped to avoid the rampant misinformation and wild speculation that currently exits," Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Friday. "We will continue to work with Congress to reach an accommodation on providing additional information."

It was a striking reversal for an administration noted for standing its ground even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Gone were the department's biting assertions that the prosecutors were a bunch of "disgruntled employees grandstanding before Congress." And the department no longer tried to shrug off the uproar as "an overblown personnel matter," as Gonzales had written in an opinion piece published Thursday in USA Today.

[napi21]

1. Boy! There must be some really BAD STUFF going on inside

the DOJ for them to just give up this easy! I wonder if we'll ever find out what it is?

[Nite Owl]

2. But the prosecutors are still fired?

So they may not have gotten all they wanted but they are settling for what they did get.

[aquart]

9. Yup. They got what they wanted. It's all done.

All the attorneys left, with the exception of Fitz's crew, are obedient.

[Supersedeas]

13. Time to pad the resumes of those replacements

[malaise]

3. Bushco is imploding by the minute

We are going to have a grant time here on DU.
Stock up as there will be several GOP :blush: :blush: :blush:
Meanwhile I'm lovin it. :rofl: :rofl:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. but stomping on their grave is not enough

we have to cut their heart out, boil it in linseed oil, remove their brains, and fry it in a steel recycling furnace, bury it in the deepest abyss in the Pacific, in a stainless steel, lead-lined, concrete filled coffin the size of a small aircraft carrier.

[malaise]

8. I'm all for that Antifaschits

LOL :D

[spanone]

5. Arlen is their 'go to' man for roughing up their own. Then he backs off.

Pattern has gone on for a long time.

[rodeodance]

6. "One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later,"

........"One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," Sen. Arlen Specter

[wicket]

7. I just edited my post to bold that statement

Pretty prophetic heh :D

[wicket]

10. kick

:kick:

[wicket]

11. .

:kick:

[lovuian]

12. They were scrambling because they have

tried to take over the FBI and some people work there for years