Rove Strikes Again

You've gotta appreciate how well the Dems play into Rove's hand.  Like shooting fish in a barrel. 
The US Attorney firings will take up weeks and weeks of lead news.  There is absolutely nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about the AG firing US Attorneys.  Even if those firings are politically based.   The US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. 
But Rove, knowing the apoplectic fit the Dems would throw at these firings, must have worked with Gonzales as to the timing and tenor of the firings.  And it has worked.  By the time this latest tempest in a teapot subsides, there will be no damage to Bush among those who now support Bush, there will be hundreds and hundreds more of examples of BDS within Congress (see Leahy), and the whole of Congress will have looked at the smoke and mirrors as if nothing else was of more import.  In the mean time, the troop buildup in Baghdad will continue on, the improvements in Iraq will be substantial, the Goracle testimony will move to page two, and Congress will have been tied in knots for weeks, if not months over a "scandal" that is no more likely to hurt Bush or the Administration's efforts domestic and foreign than Valerie Plame's "testimony", which came and went as if it never happened. 
Pure genius. 

Comments

[Anti-Whiner]

As usual, you not only lie but you don't have a single clue what you're talking about.

Every administration replaces all the U.S. attorneys at the start. Clinton did it in '93 and Bush Jr. did it on '01. After that, they're replaced for cause or retirement. That happened three times (maybe four) under Clinton. There was nothing even remotely political in any of those cases.

Now, as to the importance of the latest stuff, this goes right back to Watergate. In '73/'74 Nixon refused to release the tapes and instead offered "edited summaries," which among other things put the phrase, "(expletive deleted)" into the American slang lexicon.

The Democrats weren't satisfied with edited summaries of the tapes, and went through the courts to get the originals. Along the way, Nixon used the same phrase as Bush did yesterday: "fishing expedition."

I was a teenager during the Watergate investigation, and one of my most vivid memories is of an editorial cartoon of a fish with Nixon's face on it and a caption saying, "I will not be party to a fishing expedition."

In August of '74 the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to hand over the tapes, and then he was gone. His attorney general went to prison and so did a bunch of his closest aides.

The Republicans are about to re-learn what "the rule of law" means in this country. They've been lying and getting away with it for quite a while, and like all liars they got sloppy and told one too many. This is the beginning of the end of your Liar-in-Chief, inspiration and role model, Liar Diggs.

First you lose your war, then your boy gets tossed on the scrap heap. Just watch.

[MC]

The US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. Which means that the President can replace them at anytime. They are political appointees so their hiring and replacing always have a political flavor with them. Just because it is normal practice to not change them in the middle of the term does not make it illegal. The only scandal here is the democrats waste of money and time over this.

[Anti-Whiner]

In February, your lying attorney general testified in Congress that he would never fire anyone for political reasons. Maybe they'll bunk Alberto with Scooter in federal prison.

[Anti-Whiner]

[b]"The Rule of Law"[/b]
By Tony Snow
Republican Hypocrite and Liar Diggs Hero
March 29, 1998

"From Day One, the chief challenge facing this White House has been to place maximum distance between Bill Clinton and his behavior. That strategy has succeeded, but only with the help of mighty assaults on our common sense.

"In order to exonerate the chief, aides have made fantastic claims: that they lied to their personal diaries, that Velcro-brained lawyers couldn't recall crucial incidents, that files vanished or moved from one place to another as if by magic, that scores of people with nothing to gain from lying nevertheless perjured themselves, and that this contagion of amnesia, sloppiness and venality was just the gosh darnedest series of coincidences ever witnessed by man or beast.

"The wall of separation between Mr. Clinton and his deeds remains strong because minions have stuck to their alibis. But now comes an episode in which the Man from Hope stands alone. It is his recent attempt to claim executive privilege for counselors Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Mr. Clinton can't blame his lawyers for this latest feint. He alone can assert the privilege. The maneuver places him at the heart of his administration's ongoing effort to use executive privilege as a way of concealing the truth about whether the president exposed himself. It is almost impossible to think of this as anything but a tactic to delay independent counsel Kenneth Starr long enough for James Carville and other red-ant assailants to nibble at Mr. Starr and pump as much venom as possible into the political system.

"Consider the key issues:

"Is the first lady subject to privilege?

"The White House argued during the health-care debacle that Mrs. Clinton wasn't a 'special government employee' but just an outsider with superhuman endowments of civic virtue.

"But a president can't use privilege to shield someone who doesn't work for him, so the White House must have reversed itself and declared Mrs. Clinton a bona fide official. Unfortunately, that is against the law. The so-called Kennedy rule, drafted after Robert Kennedy served as his brother's attorney general, prohibits presidents from hiring relatives in top positions.

"Mrs. Clinton may be stronger and more influential today than ever before. But that still isn't good enough to qualify her as a candidate for coverage by executive privilege.

"What kinds of conversations does executive privilege protect?

"The courts have said a president generally can shield communications that reveal fundamental deliberative processes. That includes communications between aides as they try to develop recommendations for their boss.

"But protected conversations involve predictable categories: military, diplomatic or national security secrets or law-enforcement activities. Jurists haven't found a constitutional writ for protecting damage-control meetings involving allegations of infidelity. So unless Monica Lewinsky were secretly advising the president on nuclear proliferation or the tobacco deal, the assertion of privilege seems highly suspect.

"What are the limits on privilege?

"Earlier in this administration, then-White House legal counsel Lloyd Cutler decreed that the White House never would assert privilege in the face of a criminal investigation. He merely was reiterating long-standing executive-branch policy along those lines. President Ronald Reagan didn't invoke privilege in Iran-contra, and neither did President George Bush.

"But precedent is gone, and Mr. Clinton wants to protect conversations about a chubby intern from Hollywood. In so doing, he becomes the first president since Richard Nixon to use executive privilege in a criminal inquiry.

"Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.

"Chances are that the courts will hurl such a claim out, but it will take time.

"One gets the impression that Team Clinton values its survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public's faith in Mr. Clinton will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold the rule of law."

[MC]

AW your posting supports President Bush's position. Karl Rove and Harriet Miers both work and worked for the President so fall under the executive priviledge. So in essence the Congress is on a fishing expedition for nothing but grandstanding. The article above was about people who didn't work for the former President Clinton and how Clinton could not use executive priviledge, although he tried. And this case with the US Attorneys is not a criminal case, unless of course you are deranged enough to believe that being Republican is in of itself criminal.

[Anti-Whiner]

I can understand why you and Liar Diggs support these people. Liars stick together.

"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."

- Liar Gonzales, March 13

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met with senior aides on Nov. 27 to review a plan to fire a group of U.S. attorneys, according to documents released last night.

- Washington Post, March 24

Drip, drip, drip.

Gonzales's deputy is testifying next Thursday. Hey Liar Brownshirts, does the name "John Dean" ring a bell? You say there are no crimes here? Just wait. This will be fun.

Oh, but I forgot. Republicans are outraged by lying only if it's a Democratic president lying about a blowjob. Do you know how fucking pathetic you people are?