There's more

In his Friday op-ed spot, Krugman takes up the issue of the independent-minded US attorneys being systematically pushed out and replaced by Republican operatives. He also added a little more spice to the leftovers from yesterday's testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee by Attorney General Gonzales:

In Senate testimony yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to say how many other attorneys have been asked to resign, calling it a “personnel matter.”

But with his usual penetrating insights, Professor Krugman sorts out more of the malfeasance behind the scenes of chicanery and blockheaded clowning in the hallowed institutions of American civilization.

As Paul Kiel of TPMmuckraker.com — which has done yeoman investigative reporting on this story — put it, this clause in effect allows the administration “to handpick replacements and keep them there in perpetuity without the ordeal of Senate confirmation.” How convenient.

Mr. Gonzales says that there’s nothing political about the firings. And according to The Associated Press, he said that district court judges shouldn’t appoint U.S. attorneys because they “tend to appoint friends and others not properly qualified to be prosecutors.” Words fail me.

Mr. Gonzales also says that the administration intends to get Senate confirmation for every replacement. Sorry, but that’s not at all credible, even if we ignore the administration’s track record. Mr. Griffin, the political-operative-turned-prosecutor, would be savaged in a confirmation hearing. By appointing him, the administration showed that it has no intention of following the usual rules.

The broader context is this: defeat in the midterm elections hasn’t led the Bush administration to scale back its imperial view of presidential power.

On the contrary, now that President Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, he’s more determined than ever to claim essentially unlimited authority — whether it’s the authority to send more troops into Iraq or the authority to stonewall investigations into his own administration’s conduct.

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.

So what do we have to say to all the unconvinced, noncommittal CONSERVATIVES who say to me, "Oh I don't think we should/can/ought to impeach Bush and Cheney!" "We won!" "That's a waste of time?"



We don't really have any choice. Nothing right is going to happen as long as they're in there. And there's too much that can go wrong.