Forget The Lawyers - Kill The Pundits

(Note: This is a metaphorical reference and not an actual endorsement of violence, so chill…).

I have to admit that David Brooks provided a unique analysis of the eight U.S. attorney firings today in the New York Times (I may be on this topic most of the day the way things are going), and it is available through Times Select here.

Since I refuse to pay for online editorial content, I can’t grab the entire online version of this screed and refute it point by point. I’ll just note some remarks from Brooks that are particularly astonishing (and like Lou Dobbs did earlier, Brooks is just so shocked that, as an elite god of Pundit Land, he must sully himself with such a seedy partisan exercise).

Brooks starts off on the wrong foot by proclaiming that prosecutors should be “properly political when their choices are influenced by the policy priorities of elected officeholders. If the president thinks prosecutors should spend more time going after terrorists, prosecutors should follow his lead.”

After reading that sentence, I felt relieved that Brooks is merely a media know-it-all as opposed to someone employed in our criminal justice system.

I’ll tell you what; read this post from Josh Marshall on the firings and you’ll understand how nonsensical Brooks’ argument truly is (indeed, the entire “let’s cut out the B.S.” tone of what Marshall says is appropriate as far as I’m concerned.)

Being “properly political” is completely antithetical to enforcing the rule of law. And by saying that Iglesias wasn’t “properly political,” Brooks is parroting the claim of both New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson and especially Sen. Pete Domenici, both of New Mexico, that Iglesias didn’t prosecute alleged voter fraud in that state (and Iglesias provides a resounding defense of his actions here, to accompany Josh Marshall’s fine analysis which he provided above).

Brooks also reminds us of Harry Truman’s effort to block the reappointment of Maurice Milligan, a U.S. attorney investigating the Pendergast political machine in Missouri which greatly helped Truman’s rise to power. In addition to the fact that this is ancient history, it is an inaccurate comparison because Truman was trying to use political leverage to intervene on a congressional matter; the hidden Patriot Act provision allowed Dubya to circumvent Congress altogether in appointing U.S. attorneys. Also, Brooks disingenuously brings us this bit of conjecture:

People of good faith disagree about whether the Clinton administration behaved improperly in firing almost all of the 93 prosecutors it inherited, in the midst of some high-profile and politically troublesome cases.

This is a smear by Brooks, pure and simple. And I’m not going to devote the time or the effort to trying to analyze the circumstances under which all of the U.S. attorneys were removed when Clinton took office; I’ll let the hot-shot New York Times editorialist (who gets paid for this stuff, after all) back up his charge with details, if he can.

And of course, Brooks has to take a shot at the Democrats as Dobbs did earlier, criticizing their “cacophonous demagoguery,” and also at Bushco for its decision to “expend political capital so that his staffers can lie to Congress without legal consequences” (sometimes even Brooks can stumble awkwardly into the truth).

Finally, Brooks criticizes the Justice Department under Abu Gonzales because “they could not articulate the differences between a proper political firing and an improper one,” assuming that there is such a thing as a proper political firing to begin with.

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. I’m glad not only that Brooks is not employed in our criminal justice system (sorry for the double negative); I’m glad he holds no position in government as well.