Mr. Gonzales finds himself in this mess because he and others in his shop appear to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet know, didn’t need covering. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president — with the advice and consent of the Senate. The president was entitled to replace any he chose, as long as he wasn’t intending to short-circuit ongoing investigations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Post editorial board isn’t dumb; its members surely read the paper’s own coverage of the controversy. And yet, it appears the editors just haven’t thought this through.<\/p>\n
First, the decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys, in an unprecedented purge, did<\/i> need covering. That’s why they tried to cover it<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Second, the president wasn’t just replacing prosecutors that served at his pleasure; he fired those who failed to politicize their offices to his satisfaction.<\/p>\n
The Post, for reasons that defy comprehension, appears anxious to cut the administration all kinds of slack, and extend a very generous benefit of the doubt. If the editorial board read its own paper’s coverage, it would know better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Washington Post’s reporting on the prosecutor purge scandal has been impressive and informative. The Washington Post’s editorials on the scandal still need to catch up. Today, for example, the WaPo opines on the inconsistencies in Alberto Gonzales’ version(s) of what transpired and encourages him to set the record straight. But then there’s this: Mr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}