Posted by
arandomguy on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 3:35:20 PM
In a 94 - 2 vote today, the Senate voted to restrict the authority of the justice department to hire and fire employees. A provision of the Patriot Act allowed President Bush and the Justice Department to hire and fire attorneys without congressional approval. However, amid the "scandal" involving the firing of 8 US attorneys, the Senate has decided to restrict this power, claiming that the Bush Administration abused it.
This is really stupid. If it was in the Patriot Act, then there was a clear national security reason to have this law in place. Now the Democratic controlled Senate has voted to repeal this portion of the law. What is to stop them from repealing other portions of the Patriot Act? Nothing. They could repeal every effort we have made to combat terrorism in this country, including ending our wars, and destroying our efforts to secure this country.
My next question, is where are the Republicans? 94 - 2 means almost every single Republican voted to limit this authority of the justice department over hiring and firing attorneys. The Republicans have lost all confidence - and they are not standing up for what is right. They did not stand up for Scooter Libby, and they are not standing up for the Attorney General, neither of whom did anything remotely illegal.
According to the Democrats who sponsored this measure, it is to remove the politicization of US attorneys. "If you politicize the prosecutors, you politicize everybody in the whole chain
of law enforcement," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Here's my question. How is forcing Republican nominees to sit through Democrat-run confirmation hearings de-politicizing the "whole chain of law enforcement?" You know these attorneys will be grilled on such issues as the Patriot Act, their support for the Iraq War, their stance on torture and interrogation and whatnot. In reality, none of these issues matter, since the US attorneys prosecute what cases they are told to prosecute (as all prosecutors do), and take orders from the Justice Department.