Posted on 03/14/2007 10:09:38 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
When Attorney General Janet Reno first announced the blanket dismissal of about 70 United States Attorneys who are Bush Administration holdovers, her aides said she might exempt those needed to wrap up significant investigations. But yesterday the White House, making clear once more that Ms. Reno is not fully in charge at the Justice Department, removed most of that fig leaf of an exception.
President Clinton's spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, said that some top prosecutors who are tied up in trials would be allowed to complete them, but most others would have to go. Their investigations would be continued by lower-ranking staff attorneys.
Those booted out would include U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens of the District of Columbia, who, Mr. Stephanopoulos noted, "is not in the middle of a trial." But Mr. Stephens is in the middle of an investigation of irregularities in the House of Representatives and a detailed financial auditing of one of the most powerful House Democrats, Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of Ways and Means.
(Excerpt) Read more at select.nytimes.com ...
boy was that ever prophetic
back then we were just finding out who Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster really were
Back when the Times actually tried to be impartial?
Back when the Times actually tried to be impartial?
I notice the media and Nancy Pelosi seem to have amnesia about this little Clinton incident.
I saw someone on CNN this morning dismiss the fact that the Clinton administration fired all US attorneys when they came in as being "different" from what the Bush administration has done. They can't even come up with decent excuses any more. Point out Liberal hypocrisy and all they do is claim "that's different" and refuse to address the issue. Pathetic.
bookmark for followup later...
I think it is time to come up with a new jingo:
The Clinton Culture of Corruption
This type of historical posts is always interesting/ sort of like seeing or remembering old TV broadcasts or print media mentions or Osama bin Laden going back long before 9-11. Not that WE could have done anything about it. But the Clinton's first year practice of sweeping WAY too many people out of their way, (this example only being one of many), smacked then and smacks worse now of their characteristic bullying traits, showing all the velvet-clothed hallmarks of the kinds of coup dictators like Castro pulled off 35 years earlier. Meanwhile , THIS NYT article, obviously getting a little excited by this near-dictatorial behavior, just laid back and reported it this way, uhhhhhh, "objectively", but basically, in light of what was to follow, admiringly.
This type of historical posts is always interesting/ sort of like seeing or remembering old TV broadcasts or print media mentions or Osama bin Laden going back long before 9-11. Not that WE could have done anything about it. But the Clinton's first year practice of sweeping WAY too many people out of their way, (this example only being one of many), smacked then and smacks worse now of their characteristic bullying traits, showing all the velvet-clothed hallmarks of the kinds of coup dictators like Castro pulled off 35 years earlier. Meanwhile , THIS NYT article, obviously getting a little excited by this near-dictatorial behavior, just laid back and reported it this way, uhhhhhh, "objectively", but basically, in light of what was to follow, admiringly.
Cached Version of Parsons v. United States, 167 U.S. 314 (1897)
Will someone please stuff a copy of this in Schumer's mouth?
The Pelosi Peeps and all the Dem-wits are just trying to stir the pot whenever and wherever they can. It's all payback for the Clinton impeachment and then losing the last election. Tit for tat. That's all it is. You can expect a lot more time wastings and investigations.... it's the right wing conspiracy/culture of corruption mantra spouted by 'the global warming trumps all crowd'.
God, I love Free Republic.
A really good Freeper NEVER loses a bookmark he might need later, eh?
Hillary's lapdog Stephie trying to hide his sh&T-eating grin as he reported the outrage of Bush's firing of these US attorneys!
And Big Media can't figure out why a majority think they are biased!
CNN is right. The CLinton firings were different. They were FAR worse. And I say worse implying there was something wrong with the Bush admin. performance-based firings of only 8. There wasn't. But Clinton firing all 93 was totally unprecedented and not at all in keeping with typical employee churn at Justice. To whit from today's WSJ:
The Hubbell Standard
Hillary Clinton knows all about sacking U.S. Attorneys.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
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 the District of Columbia, 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.
And it may be this very amateurism that explains how the current Administration has managed to turn this routine issue of replacing Presidential appointees into a political fiasco. There was nothing wrong with replacing the eight Attorneys, all of whom serve at the President's pleasure. Prosecutors deserve supervision like any other executive branch appointees.
The supposed scandal this week is that Mr. Bush had been informed last fall that some U.S. Attorneys had been less than vigorous in pursuing voter-fraud cases and that the President had made the point to Attorney General Albert Gonzales. Voter fraud strikes at the heart of democratic institutions, and it was entirely appropriate for Mr. Bush--or any President--to insist that his appointees act energetically against it.
Take sacked U.S. Attorney John McKay from Washington state. In 2004, the Governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129-votes on a third recount. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other media outlets reported, some of the "voters" were deceased, others were registered in storage-rental facilities, and still others were convicted felons. More than 100 ballots were "discovered" in a Seattle warehouse. None of this constitutes proof that the election was stolen. But it should have been enough to prompt Mr. McKay, a Democrat, to investigate, something he declined to do, apparently on grounds that he had better things to do.
In New Mexico, another state in which recent elections have been decided by razor thin margins, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias did establish a voter fraud task force in 2004. But it lasted all of 10 weeks before closing its doors, despite evidence of irregularities by the likes of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. As our John Fund reported at the time, Acorn's director Matt Henderson refused to answer questions in court about whether his group had illegally made copies of voter registration cards in the run-up to the 2004 election.
As for some of the other fired Attorneys, at least one of their dismissals seemed to owe to differences with the Administration about the death penalty, another to questions about the Attorney's managerial skills. Not surprisingly, the dismissed Attorneys are insisting their dismissals were unfair, and perhaps in some cases they were. It would not be the first time in history that a dismissed employee did not take kindly to his firing, nor would it be the first in which an employer sacked the wrong person.
No question, the Justice Department and White House have botched the handling of this issue from start to finish. But what we don't have here is any serious evidence that the Administration has acted improperly or to protect some of its friends. If Democrats want to understand what a real abuse of power looks like, they can always ask the junior Senator from New York.
So Stephi actually uttered those announcements about the attorneys being wholesale fired and then apparently convenient forgot his own words when shilling for the RATS on ABC this past weekend.
And let us all remember that it was President Bill Clinton who pardoned Dan Rostenkowski.
So, first the Clinton Administration fires the lead attorney investigating the most powerful Democrat in the House, then the Clinton Administration pardons the formerly most powerful Democrat in the House.
A related link:
How The NYT Covered Reno’s 1993 Firing Of All US Attorneys
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1800258/posts
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