BLOWING UP ANOTHER WINGER MYTH

Since the massacre of U.S. attorneys on Pearl Harbor day 06, the noise machine on the right has strived to run all about with their grizzled, coffee-stained, dog-eared excuse that “Clinton did it, too.” Now, ignoring for the moment the obvious comeback that “but I though you guys were going to do BETTER than Clinton – restore honor and integrity and all that . . . “ – the Rush O’Hanitwits have been blathering that talking point constantly, as if evil Bill and his uber ambitious wife were roving the countryside sacking prosecutors for 8 years. Instead, we get the basis for this talking point directly from turd-blossom himself, at an appearance, ironically enough, at the Clinton School of public policy at the University of Arkansas, As reported by the Washington Post, Rove’s defense of the sacking went something like this:

At least one administration official, presidential adviser Karl Rove, stood by several stances that the Justice Department has now backed away from. He defended the firings in an appearance at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock as "normal and ordinary" and compared them to decisions by President Bill Clinton and Bush to remove nearly all federal prosecutors after taking office.

Now, the Pearl Harbor Day bombing of the Justice Department is not a new president coming in and clearing space for his own brand of patronage. The congressional hearings reveal that it is in fact all about payback, for not towing the partisan line and burning prosecutors who didn’t persecute the opposition. More importantly, the recently floated excuse that the sackings were “performance-related” has been knocked over by the contents of the prosecutors’ personnel files, all of which contained commendable evaluations. Will anyone pay attention to this? What else does it take, when the pile is already stacked high with WMD lies, energy company mischief, the sixth year of post 9/11 freedom for bin Laden, Katrina, the attempt to smear Joe Wilson by destroying his wife’s CIA cover, “greeted as liberators,” and “last throes?”