Justice with polarized lenses?

I appreciated WallDon's crosslink, at the end of his "The Department of Just Us", to a NYT article today by Eric Lipton, "Some Ask if U.S. Attorney Dismissals Point to Pattern. . . ." And I sympathize with WallDon's "well, duh!" reaction to the Times' tardiness.

Lipton's article reports about questions now arising over the propriety and motives of various prosecutions of Democratic officials by this nation's cadre of carefully-vetted-as-Republican, "loyal Bushie" US Attorneys. And in looking at it, I remembered that one of my first reactions to the whole scandal was that it really undermines the credibility of all of the US Attorneys who were not fired.

Any federal prosecution of a Democratic official is now politically suspect. (And I live in Chicago, where we can not deny that somebody has to keep an eye on the Dem's.) Sure enough, Lipton writes:

When a jury acquitted Carl J. Marlinga, a former county prosecutor from suburban Detroit, of bribery charges last year, his initial reaction was to write off the episode as a terrible mistake that at least had been corrected. . . . Mr. Marlinga, 60, who was charged while he was a Democratic candidate for Congress, no longer has such confidence in the integrity of the legal system.

“Was there some extra pressure on the United States attorney’s office, whether articulated or tacitly understood, by their superiors in Washington who would not look favorably upon the office if this case was not pursued?” he asked. “I have to wonder.”

That kind of second guessing has surfaced with increasing frequency in recent weeks in states including Alabama, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Since the dismissals of eight United States attorneys, local lawyers, politicians, editorial writers, members of Congress and defendants are questioning what they say is a pattern of investigating Democrats. They point to inquiries that drag on for years but end with no charges, an acquittal or convictions for relatively modest infractions.

Is there fire behind that smoke? Do perceptions matter? Has Justice’s blindfold slipped down to regions Mr. Ashcroft once wanted covered? (OK, the DOJ's oh-so-salacious "Spirit of Justice" doesn't have a blindfold.)

The DOJ of course objects to the implication:

Department officials point out that several prominent Republicans have been prosecuted in recent years, including former Representatives Randy Cunningham of California and Bob Ney of Ohio.

But the key word here is “prominent”, as in outrageous—and of course at least one of the prosecutors involved, Carol Lam, has since been fired. Yet,

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, along with other senior Justice Department officials and prosecutors, has rejected the criticism.

“We’ve prosecuted members of Congress, we’ve prosecuted governors, Republicans, and so this notion that somehow we’re playing politics with the cases we bring, it’s just not true,” Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19.

Funny what Gonzales remembers. . . .