The administration said that "mistakes were made" regarding the firing of eight federal prosecutors pursuant to e-mails that indicated they were not "loyal bushies." However, the President is not on record as saying that "There is no indication that anybody did anything improper."
Read that for a minute - it's not improper, in the Executive branch of the United States Federal Government, to make mistakes that result in the termination of individuals who received excellent assessments.
I don't really care if the President fires US Attorneys. That's part of his job. I don't like that the attorneys were fired pursuant to a PATRIOT ACT provision that seems unrelated to the reason the attorneys were fired. I don't like that the administration first blamed Harriet Miers, and said that Karl Rove had nothing to do with it, when he in fact, did, and I really don't like the "reasonable alternative" that the president has offered - that it is unnecessary to put these individuals under oath to testify as to the role of the firings. I really hate the idiotic "but Clinton did it, too." So what? President Bush ran on a platform that he was going to bring respectibility back to the White House. He has not done so. And he needs to start holding those who work for him accountable to the American Public when they make "mistakes." If Congress believes that putting them under oath to have a record of their testimony, then that's what should happen.
I certainly don't want the precedents that this administration has suggested here and in other issues to move on to a potential Hillary White House - bad bad bad.
2 comments:
My suspicion, Steve, is that in the government, there are two grades: good and bad. How much credibility to give either is open to debate. (In the same way, I discovering to my despair that, at public schools, the grades are meaningless, since everybody is either average or failing.) There is little doubt, though, that these individuals didn't follow the boss's orders, which is always a firing offense in the real world. There is also little doubt (and I have this from the horse's mouth), that while these individuals may have been given a generic good ranking, some were really bad managers, which is after all their primary job. To put too much credence in the ratings as a reason why these people should not have been fired, therefore, is to ignore the realities of politics and workplace, especially when the workplace is political.
And that I could believe were it not for the disinformation from the administration, Bookworm. The administration had the opportunity, even today, to say that these firings were politically motivated, yet they did not.
There have been too many conflicting stories on this issue.
I can buy into your hypothesis regarding the levels, but I submit that there was at least a third - the level that Fitzwhatever reached was somewhere in between the "loyal bushies" and the ones who were fired.
Post a Comment