WASHINGTON — More than a year before the Bush administration has said it first considered firing US attorneys, a top Justice Department official asked lawyers to determine how the administration could temporarily fill vacant US attorney positions with appointees who had not been confirmed by the Senate.
In a September 2003 memo, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which answers legal questions for the president and his appointees, described a way to install a replacement US attorney who could serve up to 330 days without Senate confirmation.
But the memo also said that any appointee would eventually still have to win confirmation from the Senate or be approved by a federal court to continue serving. Two years later, the administration quietly got a provision inserted into the USA Patriot Act reauthorization bill giving itself the power to permanently appoint replacement US attorneys without Senate or court approval.
from the Boston Globe
This might be the hook this story needs to grow some legs. The mass firings of 8 Federal Prosecutors has been a hard sell to the American public, mostly because they “serve at the pleasure of the President” which in the popular mind means he can fire them whenever he wants. It is difficult for most folks to conceptualize in a few sound bites or column inches in the Metro the difference between the customary dismissal of prosecutors at the end of a president’s term and the politically motivated dismissals which oozed out of the back corridors of the White House and infected the Justice Department.
But everybody understands the separation of powers and the checks and balances built into the American political system, at least everybody who usually votes. They are taught repeatedly from 4th grade to high school to the citizenship exam. The quietly inserted provision in the Patriot Act designed to subvert this is precisely the kind of sneaky fascist chicanery undermining the bedrock principles of American democracy that could capture the national imagination and spark a wave of righteous indignation against the regieme.
It may not be enough to jump start the impeachment movement all by itself, but it could get the ball moving in the right direction.
