Firing all 93 US Attorneys? It has been done before. Ask Clinton.

Are politicians so dependent on the assumption that the public has an attention deficit disorder on issues or events that have happened more than a year ago? It would seem so in this case.

I find it amusing that Congressional Democrats are "outraged" with the Administration's decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys and that Bush's involvement was unjust. Even wannabe Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton blamed President Bush for "the politicisation of our prosecutorial system."

While the media, Democrats, and a few Republicans continue to criticise the Administration's conduct in this fiasco, we have to go back several years for a bit of rememberance. I am sure most people did not know that under former President Bill Clinton's term as President, former Attorney General Janet Reno fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in March 1993.

That's right, Janet Reno, with the approval of the President, evicted all the attorney generals.

In response to the hoopla, President Clinton said it was perfectly ordinary. "All those people are routinely replaced and I have not done anything differently." But this was not true. The firing of all the prosecutors was unprecedented. Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.

While it seems that the firing of these eight Attorneys was done quite poorly, the Democrats should not start firing off salvo after salvo saying this was all a Republican consipracy. They should ask Hillary about what happened in 1993 and decide whether to keep their mouths shut and remember to do some more research before making any more regretful remarks.

* * * * * * * * *

Update 03/16/07

Related Link

You can find quite a boatload of information when you search for Janet Reno and Attorney General firings. When former President Bill Clinton appointed Janet Reno as US Attorney General, she was the first woman to hold the post.

Normally, when control of the Administration changes from one party to the other, the old U.S. attorneys are replaced gradually. Thus, when Tom Corbett, chairman of the U.S.-attorney advisory committee, asked Miss Reno about the transition timetable on Thursday, March 18, and got no answers, he assumed there would be the traditional, slow handover. He reeled when, on Monday morning, Associate Attorney General Hubbell told him the attorneys would have to resign immediately. Literally. "[They] should be able to clear out of their offices over the weekend," one White House politico told Corbett. (Miss Reno was nowhere in sight.) Corbett had to fight just to get the attorneys an extra week to clear out.

The next day Miss Reno called for resignations. Jay Stephens, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., resigned that afternoon, commenting that he had been within thirty days of a "critical decision" about Rostenkowski. (Once Stephens left, the transition lost its urgency; some Republican U.S. attorneys are still on board.) The Illinois congressman may yet be indicted for his alleged abuse of the House Bank, but Stephens's hasty dismissal surely slowed the investigation, leaving Rosty, who loses his chairmanship if indicted, in place to steer Clinton bills through the House.