Obama Still Hasn’t Made Up His Mind About US Attorneys
I think, after all the ruckus liberals raised about President Bush daring to exercise his authority chief executive to replace attorneys in the Justice Department, Obama finds himself between a rock and a hard place as he tries to implement his own agenda upon arriving in office. He knows that if he replaces certain US attorneys who are popular on the right with selections that would be more popular with the left he’ll face a storm of (rightful) claims of hypocrisy from Republicans.
And some of these US attorneys are very popular. Take North Dakota’s own Drew Wrigley. A petition drive has started in the state asking Obama to keep him in office.
In North Dakota, residents are pursuing a petition drive to keep U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, a public relations campaign that was chronicled on the front page of the state’s main newspaper. Wrigley’s supporters say he needs to be in place to pursue a death sentence against the man convicted nearly three years ago of murdering University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin in 2003. And in New Orleans, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten has won the endorsement of the state’s Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, who praised him for picking up a heavy caseload after Hurricane Katrina.
Justice Department and White House officials declined to comment on U.S. attorney picks this week.
So either Obama can try pull these US attorneys out of office and cause himself a whole lot of trouble that, with everything else plaguing his administration right now, isn’t what he needs. Or he can ignore the issue, which isn’t exactly a pressing one, and hope it’ll go away.
I think Obama will do the latter.
