I haven’t written much about the recent spate of firings of U.S. Attorneys who haven’t toed the Administration’s party line. Part of my silence has my simply having been busy, and part has been because of the wishy-washiness of my own thoughts.
On the one hand, I can accept the idea of the Chief Executive perceiving execution of its platform to be a tacit part of the duties of the staff supporting the administration. On the other, firing someone who’s doing a good job purely for political reasons smells bad.
Well, let’s chock the odor up a bit more.
Via TalkLeft, I came across this McClatchy Newspapers article:
In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.
“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.
“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.