black…MYstory

The question swirling around Washington right now is not IF Attorney General Albert Gonzalez will be gone but, WHEN he will will gone. Gonzalez is a lightning rod for controversy and only those who appear parties to this whole mess are standing next to him. Except for a few Republicans who have spoken out against him, the rest are conspicous in their silence.

Now, unable to spin their way out of this mess, the Justice Department has released 3,000 email in relation to the firing of 8 federal prosecutors and, there already seems to be pieces there that bolster to claim that the motivation behind their firings was political.

For example, look at this piece on the email exchange between fired Grand Rapids, Michigan prosecutor Margaret Chiara and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty (bolding mine):

Among the e-mails released Monday was one McNulty received on Feb. 1 from Margaret Chiara, the U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“Why have I been asked to resign?” she asked.

Early this month, she wrote McNulty again, saying that “I respectfully request that you reconsider the rationale of poor performance as the basis for my dismissal. It is in our mutual interest to retract this erroneous explanation.”

She added: “Politics may not be a pleasant reason but the truth is compelling.”

Chiara asked McNulty to “endorse or otherwise encourage my selection” as assistant director at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center, which trains federal, state and local prosecutors.

In one uncomfortable exchange with Chiara, McNulty aide Mike Elston said, “our only choice is to continue to be truthful about this entire matter.”

“The word performance obviously has not set well with you and your colleagues,” Elston wrote. “By that word we only meant to convey that there were issues about policy, priorities and management/leadership that we felt were important to the Department’s effectiveness.”

This exchange get to the heart of the issue. The right-wing talking heads have it half-right. These are political appointments but, only in the respect that the President gets to select them and they are approved by Congress. However, once in their jobs, they are expected to act objectively and follow the letter of the law. In other words, you don’t want politicians enforcing the law.

Also, keep in mind, the people fired were Republicans. So, if they can fire people for not being “Republican enough”, how many people scored high marks for willing to do political hit jobs, using their prosecutor statuses or blocked/ignored investigations into Republican corruption out of political loyalty. It’s enough to make one’s head spin. But, at this point, Gonzalez is an albatross around the neck of this president and, despite some of the public statments made, he will soon join Donald Rumsfeld among the ranks of former Bush cabinet members.

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