Will they go for the hat trick tomorrow?
Yesterday, the Chronicle ran one of those "Another Voice" editorials in which they reprint excerpts from other newspapers instead of penning their own editorial. Here are some excerpts from their Washington Post "Another Voice":
The Justice Department's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys is neither as sinister as critics suggest nor as benign as the department would have you believe, at least on the basis of the evidence revealed so far. But it is, both sides agree, highly unusual and warrants further inquiry. And it points to the need to fix a law that was changed for the worse not long ago.
[snip]
More troubling: Is the Bush administration seeking to circumvent the requirement that U.S. attorneys be confirmed by the Senate? The administration tucked into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act authority for the attorney general to name prosecutors who could serve indefinitely without confirmation.
Justice viewed the previous law, under which unconfirmed replacements could serve for only 120 days, after which the district courts would name a successor, as an improper incursion of judicial authority into executive branch appointments. Yet the new arrangement presents the greater risk of the executive branch doing an end run around Senate confirmation. The best way to prevent that would be to return the law to its previous state.
Actually, the law's previous state -- in which the judicial branch made executive branch appointments -- is constitutionally troubling. If the perceived problem is that appointees can avoid Senate confirmation, then perhaps tightening the confirmation requirements is a better solution to the problem than a constitutionally troubling appointment mechanism.
Today, the Editorial LiveJournalists weighed in with their own voice on the matter:
The unprecedented dismissal of eight top U.S. prosecutors at the behest of the White House late last year finally is getting the attention it deserves. House and Senate judiciary committees are preparing to question the ousted U.S. attorneys.
There are indications the purge was anything but the routine bureaucratic shuffle claimed by Justice Department spokesmen. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' deputies gave conflicting explanations as to why the officials were forced to resign.
It's not unprecedented. One of Janet Reno's first acts as one of the more political Attorneys General in U.S. history was (with the White House's approval) to fire all but one U.S. attorney upon taking office. That was certainly a political decision, but one that conservative publications like the Investor's Business Daily and National Review concede was within the scope of executive authority.
Now, whether the Bush Administration's move was a wise political move is an entirely different question. The new Democratic Congressional majority obviously feels that oversight of executive moves was lacking under the previous regime, and intends to use its oversight power to political advantage. That's not "unprecedented" either! Undoubtedly, they think they have a political winner here (and maybe they do, if their hearings show something more sinister at work than the usual degree of political patronage and partisanship). But so far, it doesn't quite seem like fodder for editorials two days in a row.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/06/07 08:16 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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