Those words aren't just a line in a Simon and Garfunkel song, they are the actions of the Bush Adminstration in the U.S. Attorney scandal that is plaguing our nation. The Department of Justice and consequently the White House continues to boast that the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys was perfectly justifiable because they serve at the 'pleasure of the President.'
The only problem with that statement is in how they were removed. Most people know by now that these attorneys were looking into cases of corruption perpetrated by Republicans in office or not looking at certain Democrats that Republicans like Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson slyly asked U.S. Atty David Iglesias about.
A New York Times editorial looks into the matter:
The Bush administration has done a terrible job of explaining its decision to fire eight United States attorneys. Story after story has proved to be untrue: that the prosecutors who were fired were poor performers; that the White House was not involved in the purge. But the administration has been strangely successful in pushing its message that the scandal is at worst a political misdeed, not a criminal matter.
It is true, as the White House keeps saying, that United States attorneys serve “at the pleasure of the president,” which means he can dismiss them whenever he wants. But if the attorneys were fired to interfere with a valid prosecution, or to punish them for not misusing their offices, that may well have been illegal.
In law schools, it is common to give an exam called the “issue spotter,” in which students are given a set of facts and asked to identify all the legal issues and possible crimes. The facts about the purge are still emerging. But based on what is known — and with some help from Congressional staff members and Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University — it was not hard to spot that White House and Justice Department officials, and members of Congress, may have violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1520, the federal obstruction of justice statute.
As we continue to hear snippets of information about the scandal, it seems that as more details come out, the evidence becomes increasingly damning against the DoJ and their superiors in the White House. Ultimately, we should not only call for the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales, but for the heads of all the perpetrators inside and out of the White House who tried to stop justice from coming to their 'friends.'
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