US Attorneys and political football

Not to pile on or anything. . . . My colleagues here have already posted comments pushing back at the GOP/winger, Clinton-did-it-too pushback. Of course, the charge (as usual) is beyond misleading: it's ridiculously false. That, however, won't stop the virus (darn-- I broke the metaphor chain: football, you see, has rules and pretty well "fair and balanced", effective referees).

Might I suggest a reverse play? Let's see if we can establish a common starting point. If Clinton had done what Gonzalez & co. are being accused of, can we all agree (a) that partisan political machinations with US attorneys is out of bounds, and (b) that lying about such things to the public or to Congress is (as appropriate) criminally actionable and so forth?

Then let's see if what Clinton did was wrong or not; and if what Gonzalez, his players, and his upper management did was wrong or not. Given Kenneth Starr and the past, excruciating examination of Everything Bill, I would be happy to match his record and actions here against an equally searching examination of the Bush Regime's DOJ.

On 2. Hut, hut!

H/T for the germ of this idea to Mahablog's column today, "Hacktacular"-- and to one of her sources, Lincoln Caplan, "Hyper Hacks: What's really wrong with the Bush Justice Department" at Slate. Caplan lays out in detail the case that "this targeted removal of prosecutors was different in kind as well as degree from political dramas at the Department of Justice in prior administrations."

UPDATE: Just read through Caplan's article. A must read. For one thing, he's the real deal as an author. Secondly, he traced the thoroughgoing partisan makeover of the body of career, non-political attorneys who work under the US Attorneys. That bit of story sounded familiar to me, but I had forgotten about it. Though it's not directly relevant to the present issue, it does underscore what is at stake in the Regime's high-handed subversion of the American legal system.