George Bush, Congress and the Law

Three clashing branches
Mar 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition



A kerfuffle over sacked prosecutors riles the White House

BEFORE last year's election, Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker of the House of Representatives, enthused to the New Yorker about one particular consequence of a Democratic victory. “We win in '06, we get subpoena power,” she said. Her interviewer observed that she “appeared excited by the prospect”. No wonder. Control Congress, and you can order probes into anything the White House has done that you deem fishy. This week's scandal concerns eight United States attorneys whom the Justice Department sacked last year.

Some of these attorneys say they were booted out for political reasons. One had refused to pursue allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 governor's race in Washington state, which a Democrat won by a hair's breadth. One successfully prosecuted a former Republican representative for conspiracy. Another complained that he felt pressure from a Republican senator, Pete Domenici, who called him at home to ask whether indictments in a corruption case involving state Democrats would be handed down before last year's elections. And one in Arkansas was pushed aside to make room for a chum of Karl Rove, George Bush's top strategist.

To make matters worse, the White House at first failed to admit to its own role in the firings. Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general, suggested that all eight were dismissed for poor performance, though most had received warm reviews. Charles Schumer, a Democratic senator from New York, called the firings an “unprecedented breach of trust, abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department”. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, two Democrats with ambitions, called for Mr Gonzales to resign. Other Democrats called for Mr Rove and Harriet Miers, the president's former counsel, to testify before Congress. On March 14th John Sununu, a senator from New Hampshire, became the first Republican to say that Mr Gonzales should go.

The issue is cloudier than partisans acknowledge. US attorneys, who represent the federal government in district courts, serve at the president's pleasure. He appoints them. He can fire them. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, on taking office, each replaced all 93 US attorneys with ones they preferred. Mr Bush did the same. And a little-noticed aside in the Patriot Act of 2001 has allowed his attorney-general to appoint US attorneys indefinitely on an “interim” basis without Senate approval, though Mr Gonzales has agreed to yield this power.

Regarding the current cases, Stuart Taylor, a writer on legal affairs for the non-partisan National Journal, argues that it is reasonable for a president to dismiss a prosecutor over policy (for example, if the White House favours the death penalty and a prosecutor never seeks it), but not for partisan reasons. The voter-fraud cases are a difficult call. Republicans are convinced that pro-Democrat groups often inflate voter rolls by helping to register aliens, felons and underage citizens, who they assume will vote Democratic. Democrats are equally convinced that Republican efforts to curb voter fraud are designed to disenfranchise two of their core constituencies, the poor and the non-white.

A sheaf of internal e-mails handed over by the administration and distributed by House Democrats this week provided ammunition for the Democrats. Two years ago, Ms Miers floated the idea of firing all 93 US attorneys. Mr Gonzales dismissed this as impractical. Kyle Sampson, his chief of staff, suggested that they remove a handful of attorneys “who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against administration initiatives, etc”, while leaving in place those who have “produced, managed well and exhibited loyalty to the president.”

Democrats seized on the words “loyalty to the president”: an attorney's foremost duty is to the law, not his boss's boss. Mr Sampson, who came up with the unfortunate phrase, resigned on March 12th. Nonetheless, some of the administration's complaints about the soon-to-be sacked attorneys sound substantial. One was apparently loth to pursue illegal-immigration cases. Another refused to toe the line on the death penalty. And the voting-fraud cases involved credible evidence.

For Mr Bush's critics, both Republicans and Democrats, this tale reinforces two conclusions they drew some time ago. First, Mr Bush is asserting greater executive power, at the expense of other branches of government, than any previous chief executive. And second, the president is too fond of mediocre loyalists such as Mr Gonzales. That said, if he sacks him, he will have a heck of a job getting a replacement confirmed by the Senate.

The President should have cleaned house when he came in. Just about everyone said that, yet he let the Clinton appointees stay. And they gave him no end of grief during these past 6 years.

The Dhimmicrats are doing as they always do. Crying. Politics in this country is sinking to all time lows. Look at the dregs we have running this country. Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, Bush, its sickening.

If this country moves further left in 08, it will signal a major downturn in the US as a real power in the world. It will become a puppet of EU and the UN. It will be brought to bankruptcy, morally and economically. Then the world will mourn the loss and fight over who will be on top.