Say Anything Blog

When the Clinton administration got rid of 93 US attorneys they were merely replacing them.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday dismissed any comparison between the firing last fall of eight U.S. attorneys with the replacement of 93 U.S. attorneys when her husband became president in 1993.

“That’s a traditional prerogative of an incoming president,” Clinton said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Once U.S. attorneys are confirmed, they should be given broad latitude to enforce the law as they see fit, she said.

“I think one of the hallmarks of our democracy is we have a devotion to the rule of law,” Clinton said.

She conceded that should she win the presidency in 2008, she likely would replace all of the U.S. attorneys appointed by President Bush. She said that’s merely following traditions in which presidents appoint prosecutors of their own party.

Clinton argued that the Bush administration’s firing of the eight federal prosecutors has caused an uproar because it is seen as a conservative push to shift the balance of power in favor of the executive branch.

So, according to Hillary, it’s ok to fire US attorneys and place them with people more to your liking ideologically as long as you do it at the beginning of your Presidential term.  But if you replace just a small number of US attorneys for that same reason that’s terrible.  Which I don’t get.

Like it or not, federal prosecutors are a political position.  State’s attorneys run on partisan political tickets in local attorneys, and US attorneys serve at the pleasure of a President who is elected to run his office based on a partisan political platform he campaigned on.  If the President, or a member of the President’s administration, wants to replace US attorneys who those who will pursue the job in a manner more to their liking so be it.  That’s how it works.  Heck, Hillary is saying that if she gets elected she’s planning on replacing every single one of Bush’s US attorney appointments for purely ideological reasons.  As much as I wouldn’t want that to happen as a conservative, it is her prerogative as President.

Now I’ll admit that the Bush administration, particularly AG Gonzales, has been something less than stellar in handling these firings, but c’mon.  Ultimately this “scandal” is a big nothing, and the silly fools on the left like Senator Dodd who think that Gonzales should resign over this are partisan idiots more concerned about undermining the President than anything else.