Audacity of Truth
Rahmbo:
"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive."
-Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) on Obama's COS, 3/7/10
Velvet Lair- Legends March 18, 2010
- Some things are just not cute March 18, 2010
- The adventures of the lady spider killer continue March 11, 2010
- Intermission February 19, 2010
- People who allow their dogs to poop in other people’s yards February 16, 2010
Media-manufactured “attorneys fired” scandal continues to erupt
What we’ve seen in the media and leftoid blogs the last several days regarding the attorneys who were fired by the Justice Department is a classic example of a media-manufactured scandal. It starts with the basic premise that the WH has “done something wrong” and then goes about trying to prove it. In other words, a conclusion is drawn about an issue in the early stages of writing about it, and the goal from that point on is to find a way to ‘prove’ your assumptions, thereby closing the mind to any alternative scenarios.
Paul at Powerline sums up the ‘controversy’:
The Post also says that Harriet Miers recommended that all U.S. Attorneys be fired. Gonzales wisely rejected this blunderbuss recommendation. It’s worth noting, though, that such a mass firing would not have been unprecedented. President Clinton, through Janet Reno, fired all of the U.S. Attorneys after he was elected. Clinton used the mass firing as a means of covering up his real intention — to fire the U.S. Attorney in his home state of Arkansas. They didn’t call Clinton “Slick Willie” for nothing.
This time, eight prosecutors lost their jobs. It’s not implausible to think that out of 93 U.S. Attorneys, eight might be good candidates for replacement. But let’s take a quick look at some of the specifics. According to the Post, three of them had low ratings — Margaret Chiara in Michigan, Carol Lam in San Diego, and Bud Cummins in Little Rock. Cummins was replaced by Tim Griffin, whose career Karl Rove apparently wanted to advance. There’s nothing novel in appointing a rising star with good connections to the job of U.S. Attorney. I’ve seen no evidence that Griffin was unqualified and, as noted, Cummins had received a poor rating.
Two of the fired prosecutors — Kevin Ryan in San Francisco and David Iglesias in Albuquerque — received strong evaluations. But according to the Post, Ryan’s firing “has generated few complaints because of widespread managment and morale problems in his office.”
The focus instead is on Iglesias because, in addition to the strong evaluation, he was not on the original list of prosecutors recommended for removal by Gonzales’ aide Kyle Sampson. Rather, he apparently was added as a candidate for removal in response to complaints from New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans that he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases.
Is the firing of Iglesias a genuine scandal? As David Frum notes, it depends on the facts: was there a serious problem of voter fraud in the state, was Iglesias sluggish in dealing with it, and did the administration act even-handedly by insisting that its U.S. Attorneys adequately deal with serious allegations of voter fraud lodged by both political parties?
Until we see good evidence that the answer to one or more of these questions is “no,” the firing of Iglesias is not scandalous.
Wake me up when it’s over.
Related: Check out this must-read from the Wall Street Journal – The Hubbell Standard: Hillary Clinton knows all about sacking U.S. Attorneys:
Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration’s decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from–gasp–the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for “the politicization of our prosecutorial system.” Oh, my.
As it happens, Mrs. Clinton is just the Senator to walk point on this issue of dismissing U.S. attorneys because she has direct personal experience. In any Congressional probe of the matter, we’d suggest she call herself as the first witness–and bring along Webster Hubbell as her chief counsel.
As everyone once knew but has tried to forget, Mr. Hubbell was a former partner of Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock who later went to jail for mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also Bill and Hillary Clinton’s choice as Associate Attorney General in the Justice Department when Janet Reno, his nominal superior, simultaneously fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in March 1993. Ms. Reno–or Mr. Hubbell–gave them 10 days to move out of their offices.
At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: “All those people are routinely replaced,” he told reporters, “and I have not done anything differently.” In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.
Equally extraordinary were the politics at play in the firings. At the time, Jay Stephens, then U.S. Attorney in Chicago, was investigating then Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and was “within 30 days” of making a decision on an indictment. Mr. Rostenkowski, who was shepherding the Clinton’s economic program through Congress, eventually went to jail on mail fraud charges and was later pardoned by Mr. Clinton.
Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons’ Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint “Friend of Bill” Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas elite including Mr. Clinton. When it comes to “politicizing” Justice, in short, the Bush White House is full of amateurs compared to the Clintons.
Macranger is on the same page.
Update: Patterico catches the LA Times in some very selective reporting on this ’scandal.’
And Tim Graham nails it:
Moments like these are when conservatives need to focus not on Gonzales, but consider how the “mainstream” media are so transparently partisan that they omit any and all information that doesn’t help the Democrats. If you’re going to judge Gonzales (and by extension, Team Bush), ask yourself: why aren’t the Bush people reminding the media of Clinton’s 1993 firings? How can they constantly lead with their chins?
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7 Responses to “Media-manufactured “attorneys fired” scandal continues to erupt”
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What scandals aren’t media-manufactured? Most of the time, a reporter smells something fishy, investigates, and details start to come to light.
If scandals did not rely on media impetus, the issues at heart would not gain public attention, and would never develop into scandals.
I’m not sure I see the reasoning behind passing the blame for the AG’s poor decision making/oversight along to the media.
I find it relevant that some of these federal prosecutors are ones who failed to investigate Democratic voter fraud allegations in states where there was ample evidence of wrongdoing. This fits in perfectly with the Democrat theme, can’t have Democrat voter fraud investigated, that’s how they win elections all too often, so we have to demonize the Bush admin for firing them.
“President Clinton, through Janet Reno, fired all of the U.S. Attorneys after he was elected. Clinton used the mass firing as a means of covering up his real intention — to fire the U.S. Attorney in his home state of Arkansas. They didn’t call Clinton ‘Slick Willie’ for nothing.”
This is stupid. All Federal prosecutors are routinely asked for their resignations at the start of a new administration, and considering that Clinton replaced a Republican, this was no surprise. It does not serve the right side well to constantly blather that the left does it too. Forget (Bill) Clinton, already. He’s over and done with!!!
But the above stupidity is minor stupidity. Let us return to the gist of Sistah’s point, about this scandal being a media-manufactured one. There, Sistah, you are totally on target. And much more so than the people you quote. What has happened here is simple: somebody got fired; that somebody didn’t like it; that somebody complained to a mediot, who wrote the story.
Cazart! Somebody got fired. Who did it? Why, the administration! They must be covering up something!
Soon all the mediots are swarming around like hyenas around the corpse of an antelope. Soon, it’s a Gate!
The real problem here isn’t that seven out of 93 or whoevermanyitwas finally got fired. It’s that, after all the Gates, year after year, administrations left and right simply do not know how to deal with them. “Mistakes were made.” She-esh, it would have been better for the AG to have said, “yeah, I fired ‘em. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!”
And have you ever seen anything more stupid than the defenders of the fired? Oooh! Their reputations have been sullied! Puhleeze, people! These are political appointees. For them to get fired is no different from a football coach getting fired after his team goes 4-12 and fails to make the playoffs for the third year in a row. Not even the sportswriters would argue that Coach Fonebone’s “reputation” has been sullied.
I don’t know how many of Sistah’s readers are Rudy fans (I know she ain’t), but this I know (I’m from New York): Of all of ‘em, Rudy’s the best at giving the media back what they give him. And for better or worse, he never worried much about a sullied reputation.
MattT without perspective asked, “What scandals aren’t media-manufactured?”
Scandals are manufactured by the criminals or person doing the wrong doing. The media would simply report not manufacture a scandal. In this case there IS NO scandal but the media is trying to manufacture one in people’s minds.
It’s like this. Your gardener (no I don’t have one) can be fired by you at any time for any reason. You can just simply ask them to stop cutting your lawns and give them their last check. Same with these Attorney’s that were fired. They serve the president. Clinton fired 93 of them within the first month. George H Bush fired some. And I HEAR (don’t know for sure) that Reagan did too.
No scandal.
Unless you are the media trying to manufacture one.
It’s great to be duped huh??? Any issues/ideas/solutions you want to discuss instead?
This was dragged into being a scandal by the way it seemed to be executed (no pun intended).
From my understanding of this, normally presidents on their election or re-election will fire or remove the US attorneys, but President Buh on the other hand has done this mostly within his 2nd term, not at the beginning – this I think is what is driving portions of the ‘he did it for political reasons’, and giving the Democrats something to glom on to.
I believe the handling of this was done incompetently in allowing for this to even get this far.
Yes, he only fired 8 compared to Clinton’s 93? 94? But Cliton did so at the beginning of his term, soemthing every president has done, there lies a difference.
Now, it could be argued that the President has been very busy dealing with the war and everything else and has just now gotten to dealing with these prosecutors, that could take some of this away.
They gave out some excuse on bad performance on these attorneys part, but some of it may not be holding water. They should have had concrete proof, because they should have known that this would be used against them and when they come out and complain, point to their records and say THIS is why they were fired.
They also need to remind everyone one that the US attorneys work for Bush, he is their boss, these are politically appointed positions.
As for Hillary, I think she would be the LAST one who would want to bring this up, and I would think the Democrats also would not want what was behind the Clinton firings of all US attorneys during a time of some of hte things they were investigating.
Do they really want to rehash Whitewater and other things that were being investigated during that time when all US attorneys were fired by Clinton?
The only way they can really make this a scandal is with the media cooperation by omitting the Clinton facts also.
But the media isn’t biased by not reporting what Clinton did and why……are they?
And I HEAR (don’t know for sure) that Reagan did too.
According to the WSJ editorial today, Reagan didn’t fire any of the US Attorneys when he assumed office. Neither, for that matter, did Jimmy Carter.
The Attorneys have four-year terms, and serve at the pleasure of the President. Reagan and Carter both allowed the US Attorneys to complete their terms before making any changes. Clinton was the one who deviated from normal practice, and we know why – he wanted to shut down the investigations by two US Attorneys – of Dan Rostenkowski in DC, and of his own Whitewater crimes in Little Rock – and firing all the Attorneys and replacing them with his political allies (as Janet Reno herself admitted he did) had the the added benefit of disrupting both investigations.
GWR, Thanks for the education.
Will Specter and Shumer subpoena people to get to the bottom of those politically motivated firings by Clinton????
I won’t start holding my breath.