David Brooks: A question of honor

Even my coolaid drinking Republican friends are convinced that Brooks has resorted to smoking it instead. These prosecuters crossed a line of honor and had the gall to go after fellow Republicans. Well, honor is when you ignore the politics and do your job faithfully and ethically. People like yourself aren't bound by the same code of honor and ethics. If you held yourself to that same standard...well that is the point isn't it? Having standards in the first place. Having honor is something you can't understand.
Bush's management style is foolish and has hurt himself because it hurts America. Surrounding yourself with useful idiots does not get the job done unless they happen to have the skills for the job. Cronies are better golf buddies than employees. Get Real!

Why aren't we hearing anything about the fact that Clinton fired 93 U.S. attorneys in March 1993? It was an op-ed in the WSJ about this: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009784. Rod, don't you think there is a media bias in how this story is being reported?

Zina, the Clinton firings were unusual because they happened abrubtly and all at once rather than over several months as people's terms ran out. However almost all presidents replace all 93 of the AG's who are sitting at the time they take office and put their own people in place. If the Clintons had cherry picked who to abrubtly get rid of rather than implementing it as an across the board policy, then their actions would be as questionable as Bush's. I read the WSJ editorial and was appalled at the way the Journal took advantage of people's lack of knowlege about obscure government mechinations to make it appear that there was a legit comparison between Bush and Clinton's action. There are certainly examples of biased reporting out there, but this isn't one of them. What made the WSJ column particularly galling is that every in depth report of the Bush firings I have heard went to great pains to explain how this incident differs from past precedent and spoke at length about Clinton's actions. So they were depending on people not being informed by any other source for their argument to fly. It seemed very disingeniuous, if not down right dishonest to me when I read it. Besides, what sort of moral compass does a person who says, "well he did it first!" really have?

Well, on the most basic level cs is right. However shabby this deed was, it was incontrovertibly legal. The President may fire a US Attorney at will--good reason, bad reason or no reason. It may be a shame that that's the law, but there it is. And one need not be one of the administration's mynah birds to see that there is little point in a Congressional inquiry when it is known at the outset that nothing illegal was done.
And yet I keep thinking of that line from Measure for Measure: "O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength--but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant."

Joel,
They are political appointees, not tenured civil servants. The President has every right to fire them if they are not adhering to his law enforcement priorities. Someone has to set the nation's law enforcement priorities, and Constitutionally that someone is (and ought to be) the President.
You are right that it would be unlawful to fire a prosecutor in order to obstruct a pending investigation. But the burden of proof is on those asserting such obstruction, not on the President. And in this case, we don't even have any evidence of such obstruction, much less proof. This whole brouhaha just illustrates how desperately we need to teach Constitutional separation of powers in schools.

Watsy, He's the President, not the King. He does have executive authority, up to and including asserting executive privilege when appropriate. The Congress has a right to ask questions about the firings. They do not have the authority to compel public, sworn testimony without much more evidence than we have seen to this point. If you disagree, please offer a constitutional rationale. Finally, I have to laugh at your paragraph about Libby which includes "what's that have to do with Democrats?" You're joking, right? We don't have to agree with the basis for the case, or the outcome, to acknowledge that the vocal calls by Democrats for a special prosecutor, for indicting Rove, etc. were an integral part of how the process evolved.
While we will probably disagree about this as well, my perspective is that the calls for public, sworn testimony over the attorney firings is at the root political.

cs wrote: "They do not have the authority to compel public, sworn testimony without much more evidence than we have seen to this point." But the sworn testimony IS the evidence that is being sought. BTW, show me where "executive privilege" appears in the constitution. And finally, read the SCOTUS ruling "United States vs. Nixon," 1974. SCOTUS shows regard here for the (extraconstitutional) right of executive privilege, but denies that this right is absolute. And remember that this ruling was handed down *before* there was any hard evidence of criminal activity in the Nixon Administration.

I want to be very clear here- I think the matter has been handled very sloppily by DOJ. The shifting rationales, incomplete explanations, etc. have fed the fire of suspicion. As even Gonzales has admitted, mistakes were made. However, at this point, we have no evidence that laws were broken. We have 8 U.S. attorneys, who serve at the pleasure of the president, who were let go under questionable circumstances.
At this point, it looks more like a dumb move by the Administration/DOJ than anything close to Watergate. And, as we all know, if politicians were arrested for dumb moves....