I’ve been avoiding this stuff because it seemed like it was so much nothing.  But now that the liberal media is doing its best to turn it into a circus—as evidenced by the nationally televised interrogation sessions Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sat through (unnecessarily) yesterday—it doesn’t seem as if the story is likely to go away any time soon.

So let’s get right to it.  From the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal comes an opinion piece called “The Hubbell Standard: Hillary Clinton knows all about sacking U.S. Attorneys”:

Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration’s decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from–gasp–the White House.  Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for ‘the politicization of our prosecutorial system.’  Oh, my.

As it happens, Mrs. Clinton is just the Senator to walk point on this issue of dismissing U.S. attorneys because she has direct personal experience.  In any Congressional probe of the matter, we’d suggest she call herself as the first witness–and bring along Webster Hubbell as her chief counsel.

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.  (Emphasis added.)

Here’s the thing.  The Dems have been going to great lengths the past few days to emphasize the fact that Slick Willie canned 93 U.S. Attorneys at the outset of his first term, saying that it was a perfectly legitimate and ordinary thing for a new administration to do.  The finger pointing centers on the fact that the Bush administration has released eight U.S. Attorneys partway through Mr. Bush’s second term.  Ergo, say the lefties, this “proves” that the recent dismissals were politically motivated!

They say this as if purging the ranks of 93 attorneys appointed by a Republican administration somehow wasn’t politically motivated—as if the “early” mass dismissals of ’93 were covered by some sort of “free pass.”  Or should be….

Again, this is hypocrisy of the most obscene kind—the kind of hypocrisy to which Ms. Clinton apparently has become inured.  The fact that “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” drives the point home further.

And then there’s this sickening revelation from the Wall Street Journal:

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.  (Emphasis added.)

The Bush firings were politically motivated, eh?  It’s hypocrisy, I tell you.  But in many ways (as many television pundits have been saying during the past two or three days), the Bush administration is to blame for giving this stupid story the unwarranted longevity it has achieved:

And it may be this very amateurism that explains how the current Administration has managed to turn this routine issue of replacing Presidential appointees into a political fiasco.  There was nothing wrong with replacing the eight Attorneys, all of whom serve at the President’s pleasure.  Prosecutors deserve supervision like any other executive branch appointees.

The supposed scandal this week is that Mr. Bush had been informed last fall that some U.S. Attorneys had been less than vigorous in pursuing voter-fraud cases and that the President had made the point to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.  Voter fraud strikes at the heart of democratic institutions, and it was entirely appropriate for Mr. Bush–or any President–to insist that his appointees act energetically against it.  (Wall Street Journal.)

[…]

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.
�
No question, the Justice Department and White House have botched the handling of this issue from start to finish.  But what we don’t have here is any serious evidence that the Administration has acted improperly or to protect some of its friends.  If Democrats want to understand what a real abuse of power looks like, they can always ask the junior Senator from New York.  (Emphasis added.)

Well, on the one hand the administration has most certainly mishandled this affair from the moment it broke in the news.  On the other hand, however, is the way the media (spelled: l-i-b-e-r-a-l-s) converged on it much in the way flies pile onto a hunk of fecal matter.  Here’s a view of the story from the Media Research Center:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared on five broadcast and cable network TV morning shows to comment on the sudden media-manufactured ‘crisis’ that the Justice Department fired eight U.S. Attorneys, political appointees of the President.  None of the Gonzales interviewers – at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FNC – ever mentioned that the Clinton administration fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in 1993.  How can firing eight be a ‘crisis’ and firing 93 be not worth a solitary mention?

The TV journalists asked Gonzales 42 questions this morning, and not one touched on the previous administration. Every network asked Gonzales whether he would resign – 10 times in total. (ABC asked three, CNN asked four, the others just once.)

[…]

Back in 1993, the media had a different sense of ‘crisis.’  Clinton fired 93 U.S. Attorneys, and ABC and CBS never mentioned it.  CNN and NBC mentioned it in passing.  (FNC didn’t exist yet.)  The media do not merely arrive at the scene of a ‘crisis.’  They are the manufacturers of ‘crisis.’  If they decide a political action is not a ‘crisis,’ then it is not – even when the facts of yesteryear are much more dramatic than the facts right now.  (Emphasis added.)

Amen.  Here’s a video of a discussion that occurred on Hannity & Colmes yesterday (H/T Newsbusters.org).  My apologies for the poor quality of the video.

The “voice of reason” on the video is Media Research Center President Brent Bozell.

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