Following the HeadLyings

posted by The Sailor @ 7:01 PM Permalink

Part I: Tim Griffin, a WH advisor to Karl Rove and former head of Republican dirty tricks was appointed as US Attorney after Harriet Miers (another White House 'advisor') told the DoJ to fire the current US Attorney, Bud Cummins. And now poor little Timmy whines that he's a victim of early withdrawal because the Senate won't give him a fair shake:

Ark. Appointee Won't Seek Confirmation

An interim U.S. attorney says a "partisan circus" over his recess appointment makes it impossible for him to receive fair consideration, and he will not seek Senate confirmation to his Arkansas district.

What poor li'l Timmeh forgets to mention is that

[he] can remain at the post without confirmation under a new provision in the Patriot Act that allow recess appointments to last until the end of a president's term

Part II: That 'partisan circus' li'l Timmeh was talking about? Well, gee, that would be such 'partisans' as Arlen Specter (R - I didn't do it), Charles Grassley (R - Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R - Utah).

But that's just one example of how Bushco has eviscerated the US Attorneys for power consolidation. And here is where the lies really start to come into play:

"With the exception of Cummins, every firing was related to performance issues, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told Senate Judiciary Committee members."

How interesting. All those US Attorneys had performance issues. (Now, I know what you're thinking ... and stop that, this is a serious piece!)

Part III: Taking it (out) on the Lam:

All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed

. Now why would the DAG lie about the reasons? Perhaps because:

In San Diego, Lam oversaw the probe that resulted in the guilty plea of then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican. Two others connected to that case, including a former senior CIA official, were indicted two days before Lam left the job on Thursday.

Bogden in Nevada and Charlton in Arizona were also in the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress when they were fired.

Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the whole PATRIOT II Act enabled, White House directed, DoJ implemented, process was a carefully orchestrated plan to consolidate Executive power and eliminate USAs who were doing their jobs and investigating corrupt political cronies of Bush.