“Serving at the pleasure of the president”
No, this is NOT part of Monica Lewinsky’s resume!
This is one of the talking points spouted by the administration and the Department of Justice (and repeated verbatim by their parrots in the media) in defense of the firings of eight US Attorneys.
The argument is that since the president appoints these positions, it is completely OK for him to fire them. A related point (repeated at least as often) is that President Clinton fired ALL the US Attorneys, so why would the firing of eight be offensive or illegal?
The fact is: It is common for a new president to replace all or some of the US Attorneys at the beginning of his term - as normal as replacing his cabinet. Clinton did not set a precedent by doing this - in fact Reagan replaced them all as well. The important difference with what Bush and Alberto Gonzales (a man who never met a waterboard he didn’t like) did was twofold.
First, they did this after secretly changing the rules. As I wrote last month, they quietly slipped an un-noticed provision into the latest version of the (ironically named) Patriot act which nullified the requirement that the appointment of attorneys requires Senate confirmation, thereby enabling the White House to replace these positions permanently without oversight.
This week the house overwhelmingly passed a measure to undo this policy - yet the new Bushie Attorneys will remain.
Second, they did this well into the second term, as opposed to when first taking office. By this time things had started to go sour for the administration in terms of popularity, but more importantly, in terms of scandal. This suggests that they were trying to take control of a system that was plowing towards the Bushies in a series of corruption indictments on many fronts.
The idea that the attorneys ’serve at the pleasure of the president’ and therefore the sudden ousting of eight attorneys is perfectly normal is further turned on end by examining past precedent.
According to the Congressional Research Service, only ten US attorneys have been let go in the last twenty-five years other than at the beginning of a new president’s term of office. And of those ten, eight left for improper or criminal behavior (including one who bit the arm of a stripper in a night club).
According to their report:
“In virtually all of those 10 previous cases, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue. Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired for improper, and in one case criminal, behavior. The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of “questionable conduct.” For two others, the CRS was unable to determine the cause.”