From the August Harper’s Index:
Number of Bush White House officials who are authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the Justice Department: 711
Number of Clinton officials who were: 4
I read this shortly after a brief encounter with a Bush supporter during which he repeated the Republican mantra, “What’s the big deal? They serve at the leisure of the president. He can fire them whenever he wants! There’s no crime here. The Democrats are just grandstanding by making a big deal out of nothing.”
I really can’t stand the Republicans’ us use of the word ”leisure” in this argument. Look it up and you’ll find that they mean they serve at his convenience. When I hear this it often sounds as though they think the president calls up some buddies that don’t have much else to do and asks them if they’d like to do some time in the Justice Department, and tells them not to worry about knowing what to do–He’ll tell them.
What the R’s that repeat this crap don’t understand is that it’s not supposed to work that way. Politicians are not supposed to interfere with the workings of the Justice Department because if they do, justice becomes political. When justice is determined by whose side of the isle one is on, we’re in trouble.
I’ve referenced this 1941 speech by Robert Jackson to U.S. Attorneys before and I will do it again, because it is all spelled out here:
The federal prosecutor has now been prohibited from engaging in political activities. I am convinced that a good-faith acceptance of the spirit and letter of that doctrine will relieve many district attorneys from the embarrassment of what have heretofore been regarded as legitimate expectations of political service. There can also be no doubt that to be closely identified with the intrigue, the money raising, and the machinery of a particular party or faction may present a prosecuting officer with embarrassing alignments and associations.
…it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.
Anyone who dismisses the White House firing of eight federal prosecutors who were doing good jobs and had good records as a “no big deal” doesn’t understand law and you should immediately dismiss them from any intelligent conversation you are having about the ongoing investigations by both houses of congress.
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