Witch hunt?

Question

Why do those of you calling for Gonzales' head refuse to acknowledge that the firings were LEGAL and LEGIT to begin with?
Do you not understand that neither he nor the Pres owe you an explanation for these actions?
Why will you not answer the burning question: why was there not a big stink when Clinton fired 80+ attorneys during his administration?
Last but certainly not least, why is this something that, as a taxpayer, you are willing to spend YOUR money investigating?

Map: I am not ignoring the facts. Perhaps if you tell yourself the Clinton investigation found nothing, you can will it to be true. Doubt it. Anyway that is beside the point; I asked why there wasn’t a big stink when Clinton fired 80+ during his administration; you still did not answer. I would say it is completely relevant.

Dancing B: I appreciate your explanation and your civility. I agree it is troublesome; although I must point out that you too have not answered the question. My point is, WHY was this pursued in the first place? Don’t you think we’re looking a little too hard for a “cover-up”? I feel it is grasping and I’m p*ssed my tax dollars are being spent on it. And yes, it IS frightening to me, although I don’t think in the same manner that you mean.

Garth Rocket: Political appointees are JUST THAT. The hiring and firing of political appointees is not based solely on job performance; hence the term “political appointee”. Of COURSE they were fired because they were not fulfilling the political goal they were hired for! Which the Pres and AG are fully entitled to do.

Stephanie: I realize Clinton fired the attorneys when he first came into office; what relevance does timing have? This is splitting hairs, grasping, whatever you want to call it. See above for the definition and PURPOSE of an APPOINTEE. Or, look it up. I don’t care.

Think 1st: You should consider changing your username to "Feel 1st". Nice, albeit transparent, attempt at an answer: put on airs and feign superiority to avoid actually ANSWERING the question(s).

Dancing B
The expenditure is CLEARLY not my only beef here.

Answer 1

The problem in this case is not the technical legality (every president clears the majority of attorneys when they are first elected to office, not so much in the second term). It has more to do with the cover-up (remember, that's what really did Nixon in). Ethically, it is troublesome that the legal system is drug into partisan politics and told to go after a political party's "enemies". Do you not find that at all frightening? This gets very close to persecutions and all the reasons we threw off the Brits when we started this country.

Additional:
You are specifically pissed off about this expenditure? This "investigation" at least is rooted in a basic concept of American ideals. I've seen way too many fruitless and inane investigations before. This wouldn't have been my tipping point. The real investigations have not even been conducted and I'm not sure why. I would prefer to see an investigation of war profiteering or to find the traitor who exposed our CIA network specifically tasked with finding loose-nukes (the Plame case).

Additional again:
Oh, I get that you are pissed that they are investigating it with your tax dollars without a whole lot of evidence, but isn't that the point of an investigation? To gather evidence, to prove one way or the other? Or would you be happier giving Haliburton several more billions of dollars instead?

Answer 2

Bush fired all Democrat Attorneys just like Clinton had fired all Republican Attorneys. There was no big stink about that on either side. But then Bush fired 8 Republican Attorneys that he himself had appointed. Then he kept changing his story about why he did that (or rather Gonzales kept changing his story, with Bush keeping silent except to scold Gonzales after e-mails proved Gonzales was lying - why didn't Bush correct him immediately, instead of wating to see if he'd get caught in his lies? )

"the U.S. Attorneys fired by Bush in Purgegate were people he himself had appointed. Clinton fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys to get rid of George H.W. Bush’s appointees, just as G.W. Bush got rid of everyone Clinton appointed within a few months of taking office."

Answer 3

What about the $40 million the republicans spent investigating the Clinton's and found NOTHING. The whole Monica thing was practically an afterthought. The decision to pursue the impeachment was, according to Henry Hyde, politically motivated.
To call this a witch hunt is to ignore the facts. This issue comes down to whether or not there was political pressure exerted from the republican congress or the white house, on prosecutors, to either more aggressively go after Dem's or back off of rep's. What Clinton did is irrelevant.

Answer 4

Did Bush fire all 93 sitting attorneys when he took over from Clinton? Yes.

The way this is turning out, it looks like these attorneys were fired because they weren't either loyal enough or weren't prosecuting the enemies of the administration with enough zeal. Their performance evaluations showed they were top performers - why were they then fired?

Because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical or not politically motivated. What the administration did was to turn the judicial branch into a political arm of the executive branch - not ethically in keeping with the intent of the Constitution.

Answer 5

That is not even the issue so much anymore. He has given several different accounts of what happened, which brings his honesty into question. That is why even Republicans have turned against him. Honesty is pretty important when you are the head of the judicial system. I think any type of corruption is worth investigating, regardless of which party is involved.

Answer 6

If the firings were legit why did he apologize?

When Clinton fired all the attorneys he did when he came in as President, not midway through his second term.

It is illegal to fire them for malicious political reasons, it has to be job performance rated.

Answer 7

The firings were done at the BEGINNING OF THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION, not in the middle and they were not politically motivated. With the Bush Justice Department, investigations into Democrats were at a 7:1 ratio over Republicans. There were 298 investigations of Democrats versus just 67 of Republicans. The problem they ran into was that there was more evidence being turned up on Republicans than on the people they had hoped would have been dragged down.
U.S. Attorney David Iglesias- N.M. was fired because it was felt that he was not indicting Democrats fast enough. Republican Senator Pete Domenici violated Senate Ethics rules by trying to interfere in an on-going (at the time) investigation into a Democrat. He felt that he should have been indicted before the Nov 2006 elections. This did not happen, there was not enough evidence. Then he was fired for "poor" performance. He was able to prove prosecutions were up in his district by 40%.
U.S. Attorney Carol Lam-CA was fired because she was pursuing an ever widening corruption probe that had started as a result of the investigation into disgraced Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Lam notified the Justice Department May 10,2006 that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official, Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired The timing of the e-mail suggested that Lam's dismissal may have been connected to the corruption probe. In addition, yesterday Mr gonzales lied under oath yet again about Ms. Lam. He claimed she was acutely aware of concerns about her immigration record. Mr Sampson his former aide stated she was never told, Ms. Lam stated she was never told. Why the lie? Ms. Lam was in the top 10 of all 93 US attorneys for prosecutions and in the top 3 for immigration prosecutions and convictions. Yet another lie.
U.S. Attorney John McKay of Seattle was fired because he did not pursue a voter fraud allegation against the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate in the hotly contested 2004. There was absolutely no evidence to warrant an investigation. This was also used a reason not to consider him for a judgeship.
U. S. Attorney Bud Cummins AR. was pursuing corruption and fraud cases involving FEMA and he was replaced by a Karl Rove crony who did not have the prosecutorial experience for the job. The Justice Department has acknowledged that Cummins, the Little Rock prosecutor, was asked to resign solely to provide a job for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove.
He was also "threatened" and told not to talk to anyone about his "dismissal" or else they would take the gloves off and besmirch his reputation
U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden Las Vegas was investigating a reputed kickback scheme that may have fleeced hundreds of millions of dollars. His office boosted firearms prosecutions, secured the convictions of dozens of violent gang members and oversaw the cases against four former Clark County commissioners convicted of taking bribes. A GOP source said Ensign was told that the decision to remove U.S. attorneys, primarily in the West, was part of a plan to "give somebody else that experience" to build up the back bench of Republicans by giving them high-profile jobs.
U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton-AZ was fired as a result of disagreements with the Department of Justice about some office policies.
If there had been no shenanigans, why was Congress told it was for poor performance? All but one of the fired prosecutors had received positive job evaluations
Then there is the little remembered U.S. attorney who was ousted to stop an investigation into Jack Abramoff. A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2002, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.
U.S. Attorney Frederick A. Black had investigators looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court revision bill then pending in the U.S. Congress. There were some transactions funneled through an attorney in CA to disguise that he was being paid by the lobbyists. These transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002. The subpoena demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, release records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.
A day later, the chief prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. The investigation went away soon after that.
Hell even U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was being considered but that one would have been too obvious.
Gonzales is in a lot of trouble. He was not truthful when he was under oath Jan 7, 2007 which is what started this whole thing and he did not clarify or clear up the "untruths from his last visit" which was why he was afforded the opportunity to testify on Thursday.
The backstory to all of this is when he was on the hill in Jan, he swore under oath that he knew nothing about the firings. He also swore that the new US attorney nominees would be presented to Congress for vetting. Then along came the emails. The ones that showed he knew about the firings and that he knew a provision was snuck into the Patriot Act last year which changed the law to allow them to appoint US attorneys without getting approval from the Senate. Why did he lie about that? Only he knows. I think it is because of one of the appointees. The Karl Rove protege, Tim Griffin. He claimed he had prosecuted 40 cases. He is 33 years old. Come to find out he NEVER prosecuted one case, he assisted in 3 all of which were plea deals. Yet he was supposed to be the TOP attorney for a state. He would never have been able to withstand the scrutiny and if he is willing to lie to get the job, what else would these "wet behind the ears" replacements lie about while in these positions. I mean this is a job where the US attorney can take your children, your house, your bank account, your freedom.
Most if not all of the replacements that they hoped to have placed came from one very interesting source.- Pat Robertson's university, this also included the recently resigned Monica Goodling who was also supposed to get a top posting. Go figure
He was given an opportunity to save himself by clearing up the discrepancies. From what I saw, he just dug himself a deeper hole

Answer 8

If you still do not understand, you never will. Some people are just incapable of learning.

Answer 9

I've been listening to the testimony and it is ridiculous how crappy the Demorat case is. Honestly, it's scary to see how dumb some of these old windbag senators are.

Answer 10

Yes, you are correct. it is a witch hunt.