House panel plans vote on White House subpoenas
Iglesias: My Firing Was A ‚Äö√Ñ√≤Political Hit’
Past U.S. attoneys outraged by prosecutor purge
White House Effort To ‚Äö√Ñ√≤Gum To Death’ U.S. Attorney Process Moving Forward As Planned
As if the lies and propaganda that purchased the war in Iraq wasn’t enough, now we have yet another demonstration of the depths that the Administration will sink to. In their never-ending quest to ensure absolute, lock-step fealty among those who serve at the pleasure of a President, it’s become crsytal clear that several US Attorneys have been fired for what can only be called insufficient loyalty to the cause.
Silly me; I’d always thought that the job of the Attorney General and the US Attorneys under him was to enforce the law. When political loyalty is placed above love of the law, which this Administration has clearly done, what you end up with is a means for persecuting and prosecuting political enemies.
Yes, Presidents are certainly free to have players on their trust that they trust and believe. Those changes are normally made at the beginning of a President’s tenure, not more going on two years into his second term. Given the personalities involved (Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzales, among others) and the emails that have come to light regarding this matter, it seems clear that the motive in firing US Attorneys was politically-motivated and had NOTHING to do with performance.
Today on Fox News Sunday, former U.S. attorney David Iglesias beat back several misleading claims by Bush administration officials, and reasserted that his firing was a “political hit,” not done for performance reasons.
He pointed out that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales agreed to write him a recommendation even after he was fired. “If [my firing] was performance based, there is no way they would have agreed to have allowed me to list them as a reference,” he said. “In fact, they agreed, telling me that the true nature was political, not performance.”….
At least Gonzales has the balls to be up front about the nature of why he was hosing Iglesias. Of course, that Gonzales has gone on to lie early and often about the nature of and the reason for these firing goes straight to the highly-partisan and Machiavellian nature of this Administration.
Iglesias rebutted criticisms from Republican leaders, such as the New Mexico GOP chairman, who complained to Karl Rove that the former prosecutor didn’t go after voter fraud aggressively enough. In those cases, “we didn’t have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt,” Iglesias stated. “Prosecutors can’t just prosecute on rumor and innuendo. I set up only one of two election fraud task forces in the country. In fact, the Justice Department asked me to speak at an election fraud seminar as a result of those task forces.”
Iglesias also resisted pressure from Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), who made “unprecedented” ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ and possibly illegal ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ calls to him to prosecute Democrats before the Nov. 2006 elections.
In today’s New York Times, White House counselor Dan Bartlett acknowledged that calls and visits from officials in New Mexico “played a role in deciding Mr. Iglesias’s fate.”
Over the past six years, we’ve seen a President who rode into Washington promising “to restore honor and dignity” to the White House turn the Sheeple’s House into a playground for well-heeled, well-connected Republicans, Christian zealots, and Right-wing thugs of all colors and stripes.
Y’all elected perhaps the most mean-spirited, venal President in the history of our name…and quite likely THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER. The 54,000,000+ of you who voted for Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © have only yourselves to blame for this sorry state of affairs…and don’t tell me this isn’t what you voted for. If you’d bothered to pay attention and thinking critically instead of reacting to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth commercials, you would have recognized that this Miserable Failure is EXACTLY what you voted for.
WE DESERVE BETTER. Not that y’all can be bothered to tear yourself away from Fox News Channel long enough to admit to this reality.
