Give him a recess, Bush will give you an appointment

Here we go again with another unqualified, political appointment to a post that should be apolitical:

A surprise late-afternoon announcement Friday that J. Timothy Griffin will become the new U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas drew the ire of U. S. Sen. Mark Pryor, whose spokesman said the maneuver amounts to “basically circumventing the normal process.”

“We think the people of the Eastern District of Arkansas deserve to know who their U. S. attorney is,” Michael Teague, Pryor’s spokesman, said shortly after learning that U. S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made the appointment, which takes effect Wednesday.

“The proper way to do this is in the Senate Judiciary Committee, [where ] several things are done to make sure that whoever fills this post is qualified.”

... Griffin, 34, once an aide to former presidential adviser Karl Rove, has been working as a “special assistant” under Cummins for several months. He said that because he won’t officially take over until Wednesday, he didn’t want to comment on the announcement.

...Normally, the White House requests names of potential replacements for U. S. attorneys and other positions from the state’s senators or congressmen, and then chooses a nominee from among those names. The nominee then must undergo a background check and Senate confirmation — which could be tough for Griffin in the new Democrat-controlled body. Griffin, a longtime behind-thescenes Republican operative and political strategist, has worked for the Republican National Committee.