Federal Prosecutor Bob Loblaw

I think it’s important that you read today’s column by my boy, Joe Conason. It’s a story we’ve heard a little about here and there, but I guess reading it in 1000 word column format really clicked it home. It’s about the recent spate of federal prosecutor firings by the Bush administration.

You see, it’s up to the US Attorneys to monitor politicians. And because of that fact, we have, in our nation’s history, gone out of our way to see that our prosecutors are as non-partisan as is possible. Additionally, if there was a vacancy, it used to be that local judges would appoint the successor. All of which was to prevent any politically motivated shenanigans (i.e. – you get in trouble, you can’t just fire your prosecutor).

Secretly, quietly (and unbeknownst to even himself) Senator Arlen Spector slipped a tiny amendment into the Patriot Act -- that sweet ol’ Patriot Act again -- that allows the president to fill vacancies in the US Attorney’s Office. Permanent appointments with no oversight. Ring a little fascist to you? Me too.

So as you might expect, Bush has gone around firing prosecutors left and right - men and women with important roles such as prosecuting the easily bribed Representative Duke Cunningham. Bush then filled the vacancies with obsequious hacks and political cronies.

You see, Bush has his fingers in all the pies, it’s just these days he has to do it a little more quietly. I think it’s horrifying that still he’s trying to tighten his grip and squash out all signs of life in our representative democracy. Congress is trying to step in and bring some oversight back to at least this one issue, but good God! It’s positively chilling the ways that Bush keeps coming up with to try to turn our country into his own personal dictatorship.