Political Prosecutors

In the form of a lambasting of this morning's breathless story in the Los Angeles Times, Patterico has a pretty good roundup of what we know about the reasons the administration fired eight United States Attorneys. It looks like there's not much to work with, even for those afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome. That is, there appears no evidence whatever that anyone was fired because they either pursued for failed to pursue cases with direct political implications, such as official corruption.

As a rule of thumb, if someone must selectively quote the evidence to make their point, then they don't have much of a case. And that's just what the LA Times does with the internal emails recently turned over to Congress.

The Albuquerque Tribune has some better background on what is billed as the "worst" case, that of New Mexico's U.S. Attorney, David Iglesias. Today's Washington Post has a reasonable account of what is known, which sticks pretty much to the facts. They've even provided links to copies of the emails themselves. You know, the sort of thing newspapers do. Go figure.

But while it thus appears that there's not much to this controversy, it may be profitable to consider the principles generating it. What is of concern is the notion that prosecutors ought not to choose their cases and their targets for investigation for political reasons, or from political motives. A noble sentiment. But then again, half the political establishment thought it was a fabulous idea to appoint Patrick Fitzgerald and point him at the White House, and the other half was enthusiastically in favor of the same thing when Ken Starr was launched at the Clintons. So political prosecutors, and politically motivated prosecutions, are good ideas sometimes, but bad ideas other times?

Or what?