U.S. Attorney scandal

A commenter over at It's Matt's World had just doesn't seem to understand why anyone is so upset about the recent firing of all those US Attorneys. Yes, they are political appointees of the President, but they work in the Department of Justice. The DOJ is not the political enforcer of the President's political party.

Digby, quoting Kevin Drum in today's Washington Monthly, puts it well:

the only serious argument that Purgegate is a scandal is related to the reason for the Pearl Harbor Day massacre. If seven U.S. Attorneys were fired that day for poor performance, that would be fine. If they were fired for insufficient commitment to Bush administration policies, that would be fine too. But there's considerable reason to believe that at least some of them were fired because either (a) they were too aggressive about investigating Republican corruption or (b) they weren't aggressive enough about investigating Democrats.

That's it. That's the argument. David Iglesias: Didn't bring indictments against some local Democrats prior to the 2006 election. John McKay: Failed to invent voter fraud cases that might have prevented a Democrat from winning the 2004 governor's race in Washington... And this all comes against a background that suggests the Bush Justice Department has initiated fantastically more investigations of Democrats than Republicans over the past five years.

Although there wasn't any fellatio involved (that we know of) this leads to a suspicion that somebody was obstructing justice, which last I heard was still a crime.

He also links to this article in Washington Monthly, showing that at the local level, the DOJ has instituted seven times more investigations into Democrats than Republicans.