More stonewalling at Justice Published May 15, 2007
The controversy over the removal of several U.S. attorneys last year has been spreading by the week. But Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales sees no reason to change his approach, which is modeled on Muhammad Ali's famous rope-a-dope.At a hearing last week before the House Judiciary Committee, he evaded precise answers and professed a poor memory, while insisting that the decision to sack the prosecutors was utterly sound. The apparent administration hope is that by denying and stonewalling, Gonzales can not only save his job but eventually exhaust all interest in the matter.
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The purge of prosecutors looks increasingly like an effort to turn U.S. attorneys into arms of the Republican National Committee. Some of the eight prosecutors known to have been fired last year had antagonized White House political adviser Karl Rove and GOP politicians by failing to pursue cases that could have affected last year's election outcome.
But recently, evidence emerged that there were more than eight. The department canned another U.S. attorney, Todd Graves of Kansas City, after he refused to go along with a voter-registration lawsuit filed against the state of Missouri -- a suit that was ultimately thrown out by a federal judge. And Justice Department officials interviewed by congressional aides report that Milwaukee's Steven Biskupic also made the hit list after Rove complained about his handling of vote fraud claims. But he was spared to avoid alienating then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.).
Now, vote fraud is a serious matter, and the administration is entitled to make it a priority on its law enforcement agenda -- just as it is entitled to make drug cases or white-collar crime a priority. But the evidence suggests that the department's concern had a fundamental partisan motive, which is not acceptable. ...
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