{"id":2094,"date":"2007-03-13T10:59:12","date_gmt":"2007-03-13T16:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/more-dirty-hands\/"},"modified":"2007-03-13T10:59:12","modified_gmt":"2007-03-13T16:59:12","slug":"more-dirty-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/more-dirty-hands\/","title":{"rendered":"More Dirty Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/03\/12\/AR2007031201818.html?referrer=email\">Firings Had Genesis in White House<\/a>, By Dan Eggen and John Solomon, Washington Post Staff Writers<\/p>\n<p>The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"highlight\">The dismissals took place <em>after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in October<\/em> that he had received complaints<\/strong> that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, according to a White House spokeswoman. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Administration officials have portrayed the firings as a routine personnel matter, designed primarily to rid the department of a handful of poor performers.<\/p>\n<p>But the documents and interviews indicate that the idea for the firings originated at least two years ago, when then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers suggested to Sampson in February 2005 that all prosecutors be dismissed and replaced. <em class=\"mine\">[mjh: wasn&#8217;t Miers a Bush nominee for the Supreme Court?]<\/em> &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Sampson also strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, <strong class=\"highlight\">using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006<\/strong> that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation. <em class=\"mine\">[mjh: the Patriot Act is Bush&#8217;s great legacy.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Firings Had Genesis in White House, By Dan Eggen and John Solomon, Washington Post Staff Writers The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/more-dirty-hands\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">More Dirty Hands<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}