Oh, lord... Rove crawled out from under his rock...

just when you thought it was safe, eh...?

via tpm muckraker...

Look, by law and by Constitution (sic), these attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and traditionally are given a four year term. And Clinton, when he came in, replaced all 93 U.S. attorneys. When we came in, we ultimately replace most all 93 U.S. attorneys – there are some still left from the Clinton era in place. We have appointed a total of I think128 U.S. attorneys -- that is to say the original 93, plus replaced some, some have served 4 years, some served less, most have served more. Clinton did 123. I mean, this is normal and ordinary.

[...]

But this is the right of any president to appoint people to these offices. They serve at the pleasure of the president. And my view this is… unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it. And the question is did they have the same reaction if they were in Congress in the 90’s, or did they have the same reaction if they were in the 80’s. Because every president comes in, appoints United States attorneys and then makes changes over the course of their time.

sounds pretty damn reasonable, doesn't it...? tpm muckraker commenter and attorney pf responds...

Taking things sequentially in his statement, the notion that "U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president" is true, but irrelevant in this context. Congress is not investigation whether the President has the legal authority to fire these USAs -- it is investigating what factors the President permits to influence his judgment. It is one thing to say "I am legally entitled to do X;" it is quite another to expect that you can do X for nefarious reasons and expect to go unchallenged in the political arena by a coordinate branch of government. Given the supine nature of Congress over the past six years, though, I can understand why Rove believed "because the President says so" is a reasonable excuse.

Rove's reliance on "the president can do it" to try to shut down debate, is specious for another reason. The President, for example, has unfettered rights to pardon people. If President Bush started selling pardons, under Rove's logic, Congress would have no right or reason to investigate what the President had done. Many Republicans certainly took a different tack with respect to investigating President Clinton's perhaps-poorly-considered pardon of Marc Rich.

Second, Clinton's firing of 93 U.S. Attorneys was far less insidious than what happened here. Clinton's decision was generally applicable to all U.S. Attorneys -- you were hired by a different administration and I will replace you without regard to the status of any of your ongoing investigations. No one was spared, and thus no single U.S. Attorneys conduct was at issue. Here, however, Bush has not created a rule of general applicability (i.e., at the beginning of his second term seeking resignation of all U.S. Attorneys). Rather, his administration has apparently systematically chosen to replace U.S. Attorneys who were not malleable enough with respect to particular investigations of individuals or entities allied with the Republican party. There is simply no comparison between these two acts.

i could have easily gone for the rest of my life without hearing another story about karl... oh, well...

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