Rove Behind US Attys' Firings

Update: NYT: More Evidence of a Scandal

Not exactly news about Karl Rove.

But this morning's Times piece (Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton) does offer more evidence that the Bush Dept. of Justice and White House were composed of corrupt hacks. Now, they are mostly gone.

What's not over is the damage inflicted by the U.S. attorneys who kept their jobs (Adam Cohen, April 16, 2007).

Take former Bush U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic who left numerous shattered lives behind in the Eastern district of Wisconsin. Consider:

- The proven-innocent Georgia Thompson [see also Biskupic tried to 'squeeze' Georgia Thompson, and Investigate Biskupic]

- Top partisan prosecutor for the Republican "voter fraud" myth pursued several overturned voter fraud cases [see also Voter Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals]

- And the yet-to-be-proven-innocent Vietnam-era veteran, Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts, [see also U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee] who was convicted for receiving VA benefits after the national VA launched a vendetta against Roberts for being a pain, per the benefits-hostile American Enterprise Institute scholar, Dr. Sally Satel

As the former U.S. Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson put it in 1940:

"Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics of success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character. ... he can have no better asset than to have his profession recognize that his attitude toward those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just."

Using the prosecutor's office as a political club is not just unreasonable and unjust; it's reprehensible. One wonders how Biskupic and Rove sleep at night, likely not by falling asleep reading the disquisitions of Justice Jackson.

House Judiciary Chairman John M. Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said, "Under the Bush regime, honest and well-performing U.S. attorneys were fired for petty patronage, political horse-trading, and, in the most egregious case of political abuse of the U.S. attorney corps -- that of U.S. attorney [David C. Iglesias] -- because he refused to use his office to help Republicans win elections."

After a slow start Biskupic fell down on the office and proved himself a loyal Bushie, Rove's kind of man.