First there was this whole “Plame Affair,” now we have the “corruption” of the U.S. Department of Justice because 8 out of 93 U.S. Attorneys were fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

It never ceases to amaze me how adament the media is in attempting to turn even the slightest typical operation of government into a Watergate-like scandal for the Bush Administration.

U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who serve at the President’s pleasure and should probably be carrying out justice in accordance with the Administration’s goals.  So the following firings, noted in the Wall Street Journal, shouldn’t surprise anyone:

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. 

Oh, and all the Democrats clamoring for Gonzales’s head on a platter?  They may want to recall the actions of the Clinton Administration to fire all 93 U.S. Attorneys (from the same WSJ article):

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.

Hillary Clinton, sit down and shut up.

The tragedy of this story is that we have an irresponsible media corps who are blindly scrambling to conclude that the Bush Administration is corrupt before considering the true merits of any story.  Likewise, the tragedy is also that the Administration is willing to roll over to the media.  Alberto Gonzales had nothing to apologize for, and President Bush didn’t have to express such dismay while in Mexico about the firings.  Give me a break guys.  Stand up for legitimate, routine government actions and go on the attack.  Point out what previous administrations have done (notably Clinton) and explain to the American people the circumstances here.  I don’t have much sympathy for you if you’re just going to let the media paint you as corrupt without offering a true defense.