Federalist No.86: No bogarting.
Digby wrote the post I was going to write, and what’s worse, wrote it before I even thought of writing it. Typical.
Via Avedon Carol, I was reminded of this speech by James Madison on the subject of impeachment…
Yes, impeachment was considered the remedy for such high crimes and misdemeanors as the promotion and protection of incompetent government officers and the “wanton removal” of good ones. The founders didn’t anticipate that serving and pleasuring the president would be casually accepted as politics as usual.
Instead, we now have a political party and pitiful press corps who think that all this manipulation of the justice system for partisan gain is just adorable, while this was worthy of impeachment…
The irony, of course, is that James Madison is the premier patron saint of the conservative movement. Which is what makes this so funny:
Well, here are a few facts that the MSM and the Democrats seem to not be aware of. First, federal prosecutors are appointed by the President and serve at the pleasure of the President, which means he can fire them for any reason…
Secondly, in 1993 then President Clinton and his Attorney General Janet Reno in a one day fired all ninety-three US Attorneys. At the time there was no investigation, no cries for Janet Reno to be fired, in fact, the media called it a clean-sweep and a fresh start…
By now you are probably wondering why this is such a big story? You might be tempted to think that the firings were motivated by partisan politics, getting rid of a few holdover Democrats in the Justice Department. That could be true except seven of the prosecutors identify themselves as Republican with the other listed as an independent. However, even if the firings were politically motivated, it would not matter because US attorneys are political appointees.
That’s right, the Wayne State Chapter of the Federalist Society - an organization that has as its logo a bust of James Madison - is defending the right of a President to wantonly remove meritorious officers.
20 Responses to “We’ll Always Have John Jay”
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I never cease to be amazed by the duplicity of the Bush administration or of their sycophantic mouth-breathers.
Stepping in and firing all or most of the US Attorneys at the start of a presidency is common. The Bush Administration fired all of Clinton’s appointees but didn’t do it all at once.. In March of 1993 when Janet Reno became US Attorney General almost all the US Attorneys were fired. When Reagan took over in 1981 most of the US attornies were fired. But none of these people were fired to squash investigations or to punish them for not investigating the enemies of the president which is exactly what the Bush administration did.
“Secondly, in 1993 then President Clinton and his Attorney General Janet Reno in a one day fired all ninety-three US Attorneys. At the time there was no investigation, no cries for Janet Reno to be fired, in fact, the media called it a clean-sweep and a fresh start…”
What?
I don’t remember anything like this. Is he making it up?
OH, I see..
” In addition, on the March 13 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, former GOP presidential candidate and MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan said that “it is not unusual for all U.S. attorneys — or almost all except some outstanding ones, to be replaced when a new party comes into power, say, in 1993 or 2001.”
I got this from the article here.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200703150001
darn. how do you do bockquotes?
wildstarryskies, in my self-assumed role as unofficial Pandagon HTML guy:
<blockquote> some text you want to blockquote </blockquote> which then looks like this:
Yeah, cleaning out at the begining of a term isn’t unusual. It is weird to fire them mid-term, though.
Do we know this? Isn’t firing all of the previously appointed Attorney’s a pre-emptive action to fill all the slots with “your guys” who will favor the administration?
Seems to me that the firing of all of the previous administrations’ US Attorneys smacks of Partisan behavior. If it is true that Clinton and Bush Sr. did this, it is an ugly situation. But what’s worse: Firing SOME of the Attorneys for partisan reasons like Bush Jr. did, or ALL of them for partisan reasons like his predecessors elected to do?
Grill, I’m going to put it in as few words as possible so maybe it’ll sink in:
President may appoint whoever. President may not then fire them for not doing his bidding.
Smpl.
Oh, the President can fire them when he wants. That’s an allowed use of his power (NOT a right) according to the Constitution.
And the House can impeach, and the Senate convict/remove, the President for whatever they want. That’s their power.
Constitutionally, there’s the biz about “high crimes and misdemeanors”, but just like the commerce clause or the general welfare clause, that’s a totally elastic phrase that means whatever a majority votes for.
Note that I don’t want them to have majoritarian meaning; I just recognize that they, perforce, do have it. Power is like that: it resists any restriction by words.
Auguste- Maybe I misunderstood this part of the article:
Were they fired? If not, the article has misleading terminology. If they were, then what is the real difference between axing them after they don’t do your partisan bidding or before they even have a chance and replacing them with “your guys”.
To me, firing all attorneys on the way in and replacing them with people of your choosing is a pre-emptive action that may have led to the public never even finding out about Cunningham or guys like him. Therefore, to me, firing (or dismissing) them all on the way in is just as bad as firing them after they don’t “play ball”. Maybe worse.
Which is to say, I am against both actions.
To me, firing all attorneys on the way in and replacing them with people of your choosing is a pre-emptive action that may have led to the public never even finding out about Cunningham or guys like him.
Except, of course, that’s exactly what Bush II DID DO — he replaced Clinton’s USAs with people of his own choosing. Then some of them found out some very inconvenient things about Republicans, or refused to gin up charges against Democrats, so he fired them.
Again, look up Dusty Foggo. Carol Lam was fired for bringing an indictment against him.
And yet still all you can say is, “But Clinton did it too!” without looking at the fact that CLINTON DIDN’T DO IT TO COVER UP CRIMES BY DEMOCRATS.
At this point, is there anything that a Republican could do that you wouldn’t excuse? Anything at all? Because so far you’ve excused serial adulterers (Guiliani, Gingrich), sexual predators (Foley), and obstructors of justice (Libby, Gonzalez). Anything else you want to defend because maybe possibly some Democrat somewhere did something like it 20 years ago?
When new presidents take office they don’t fire US attorneys literally. They ask for their resignations. However the US Attorneys hold their positions until their replacements are approved. Here’s some numbers for you:
In 1981 Reagan replaced 71 of 93 US Attorneys and 89 by the 2nd year of his administration.
In 1993 Clinton replaced 80 of 93 US Attorneys, 89 by his 2nd year (oddly enough the same as Reagan).
Bush II replaced 88 of 93 US Attorneys in his first 2 years. I can’t find information on how many he replaced in his first year.
Bush replaced his own appointees. In all fairness not all of them were replaced to cover up things Bush didn’t want to see the light of day. But, David Iglesias was fired because he couldn’t indict democrats in an investigation of voter fraud, Carol Lam successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham and was fired, John McKay was allegedly fired because he refused to convene a grand jury in Maryland in regards to allegations of voter fraud, Bud Cummins was allegedly fired because he was investigating the governor of Missouri, Daniel Bogden had initiated investigations of 2 republican congressmen, and Paul Charlton did not vigorously engage in prosecution of pornographers on obscenity charges and for investigated a state republican legislator on corruption charges.
God. I was a member of the Wayne chapter of the Federalist Society back when Professor Grano was faculty adviser. That was apparently in the days before it had an IQ ceiling.
Having sex with an intern in the Oval Office. I wouldn’t excuse that.
Yeah, Digby does that to me all the time - writing it before I did, I mean. But this time I just figured I’d let everyone else do it.
Conservative Christian: Does that mean you’re okay w/ the rest of it? The serial adulterers, obstructors of justice, sexual predators? I personally think there’s a huge difference between consenting adults (let’s let the spouses decide what to do there), and wannabe rapists/pedophiles, to say nothing of those who pervert their oaths of office.
Should we be responding to the sock puppet?
Somehow, I get the feeling that if it was Shrub who was being blown by an intern in the Oval Office, CC would be saying “Well, she had a huge crush on him, just like all patriotic Americans do, including me. Indeed, it was his brave, steadfast leadership after 9/11, (and that manly picture of him in his flight suit) that made so much of America fall in love with him. Instead of cruelly rejecting her, our Savior President kindly allowed her to serve at his pleasure, while maintaining her virginity for her future husband. Our Commander in Chief should be chiseled into Mt. Rushmore for this Samaritan deed. Now, the press corps is sick of talking about this, so let’s drop it right now. Besides, don’t you know there’s a war on?”
“(and that manly picture of him in his flight suit)” that showed his
artificially-enhancedmanly characteristic.If he offered some Codpiece-lovin’ to the public, why there’d be a line around the block. And Chris Mathews would be #1…
I believe CC’s post is meant to mock Bush supporters.