Purge

In my reading of this post on TPM Muckraker, it appears to me that the plan to fire some US Attorneys for less than justifiable reasons - and even less than "they serve at the president's pleasure", because why go to such lengths to to make it a shady deal if it's perfectly legal and acceptable? - the plan was hatched and then the provision allowing the president the power to appoint attorneys without Congressional hearings or approval (the addendum to the PATRIOT ACT - and what does this have to do with national security?) was signed into law. I say that, because the article notes that Missouri's Todd Graves "resigned" two months after getting his notice from the Firing Squad. The date given for his announced resignation is March 10. The date given for the PATRIOT ACT provision being signed is March 2006. March 10, two months after his firing notice, he announced his resignation. I suppose that was part of the deal? Wait until March. Then we'll have the right to a presidential appointment without Congressional oversight.

Looks to me like they had this baby ready to roll off the assembly line as soon as they got the law hustled through.

Josh Marshall comments:

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is all of a piece. For three months the White House and the clique around Attorney General Gonzales have been involved in a concerted effort to cover up what happened here. And the intensity of the effort points to how bad the real story is. This has been obvious to anyone who has been following this story closely since January. But the fact that the DOJ has been collectively lying about the number of fired US Attorneys for all these months just confirms how true it is. Consider this: with all the document dumps, no emails or documents relating to Graves' firing? How can that be? The truth is that we still know very little about what happened here. Very little.