Captain Ed of Captain’s Quarters has an excellent column up about the US Attorney firings, titled WFB, The Documents, And The Gonzales Problem, WFB being William F. Buckley.

Here’s a taste of the first part of the post:

I had not planned to return to the topic of the firings of the eight federal prosecutors tonight, but a column by William F Buckley and a review of the document dump clarified certain issues in the story. Buckley, I believe, captures the essence of the massive failure seen in the Department of Justice in this instance. He notes the plenary authority of both the President to fire political appointees and of Congress to conduct investigations into the conduct of the executive branch. He warns conservatives to refrain from constraining the latter for momentary political benefit:

It is obvious that there are Democrats in Congress who want an opportunity to forage for crimes in the matter of the discharged U.S. attorneys. Nobody has come up with a description of exactly what crime might have been committed and should be investigated. What is being conjectured is that an industrious investigating committee armed with subpoena powers could come up with malfeasance of some kind.
On the other hand, the investigative function of the legislative branch is of plenary importance, and should not be aborted by hypothetical immunities of the chief executive. Woodrow Wilson wrote in his classic book “Congressional Government” that Congress’ investigative power was more important, even, than its legislative power. …

At present, the investigators want to focus on the question whether one or more U.S. attorneys were discharged simply because they were doing their duty, and that duty included refusing to speed up the prosecution of various Democrats. But in the matter of any one of the fired attorneys, guilt might be found to attach to the attorney himself — he abused his authority by protecting a friend, or by persecuting an enemy — or to the attorney’s superiors, reaching right up to the White House. …

Of one thing Mr. Bush is manifestly guilty. It is the criminal (in the metaphorical sense) mismanagement of the whole business of the U.S. attorneys. The fault is not personal; it was probably the attorney general and other advisers of the president who took so many clumsy steps. But Mr. Bush’s stress on his rights invites a coordinate stress on his responsibilities. “These attorneys,” he said, “serve at my pleasure.” Right. But presidential pleasures have to rest on defensible grounds.

Reading through the document dump from yesterday, Buckley’s analysis looks spot on. It seems clear from the tenor of the e-mails that the instigation for the terminations came from within Justice. Kyle Sampson writes in an e-mail (which I will reproduce farther down) that he had not informed Karl Rove of the plans as of November 15th, 2006. While the White House had started the conversation shortly after the start of the second term, when cleaning house made more sense, the document string seems to support the description of the actual terminations as a DoJ project.

I urge you to visit the Captain’s blog and see the entire article.

Written by ~J~

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