If you're not a political wonk who understands the process involved, think about the idea of a politician taking office and firing an entire department of people when they are elected just to install their own. That doesn't seem too strange to the average person. When you add the gravity that these are the US Attorneys who are hired to be America's prosecutors of crime in each and every state, well that makes it slightly different.
Prosecutors as well as District Attorneys and most Judges are supposed to be above the political frey. They are defending us after all. The Attorney General also is not the President's personal attorney, they're the people's attorney. Except it hasn't been that way for the past six years.
One can make certain arguments about Clinton eliminating all 93 US Attorneys when he took office and try to point the finger at him as an example (after all isn't he to blame for everything the Right gets themselves into?) but Bush wiped out all those attorneys and started fresh once again in 2001. The process is what it is, even though I have to concede some serious personal misgivings with it.
What made Bush's appointments different is what makes all of his appointments to every office different. There was a partisan bent with hopes of personal gain. These people were put in place in hopes that Karl Rove could use them as Bush's personal campaign legal team. The US Attorneys would be pressed to prosecute Democratic corruption (digging for whatever they could get them on, even if there wasn't much to the charges), to avoid prosecuting Republican wrongdoing and to prosecute cases that made the President look strong, like immigration.
Somehow the US Attorneys became a tool for the RNC to use and not defenders of the public interest.
A perfect case came up in Wisconsin of this ridiculous use of power.
Georgia Thompson, a state purchasing employee who is supposed to make purchases based on saving the Wisconsin taxpayer as much money as possible, bought travel plans through a travel agency that just happened to contribute to Governor Jim Doyle's 2002 campaign.
Two major points must be made.
1. Good luck finding a company that doesn't politically contribute to anybody. Until there is public financing of campaigns this is the system we live in. Companies contribute and often times because of similar philosophies with the person they supported are in line when government contracts are being handed out. There is no proof this happened in this case but if you want to bark up that tree take a look at every contributor to Bush and what they have been given in return. Namely Halliburton.
2. It's just a fact that with as many government officials as a State has that bulk purchasing travel plans is the most cost effective way to save money. Government officials are very much like sales people and they need to make trips to other states and countries to broker deals and bring business to the state.
So Georgia, who was not acting out of partisanship but rather trying to save her fellow Wisconsin taxpayers money and doing what her job as a State Purchasing Agent required, was an easy target for Republicans looking to smear Doyle and help Mark Green with the Governor's race.
Bush appointee Steven Biskupic prosecuted the case and has quite the Republican ties. He is the brother of Outagamie County DA Vince Biskupic who unsuccessfully ran as the Republican candidate against Democratic candidate Peg Lautenschlager in the State Attorney General's race. Not to mention a friend of the now in prison on corruption charges (surprise he was a backer of the Bush Campaign in 2000 as well), former Winnebago County DA, Joe Paulus.
Biskupic got a conviction and Republicans everywhere tried to use this to muddy the waters and make Doyle look dirty. It worked to some degree but not enough to swing an election in which they thought they had a close race and instead Doyle came out well ahead.
The election cycle is over and Georgia Thompson, convicted and used as a weapon had to spend 4 months in prison as a political casualty. A victim of how Republicans view people, as pawns in their corrupt system of greed.
The Circuit Court of Appeals nearly laughed the case out of court when they finally heard it.
One judge actually said:
"I have to say it strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin," federal Appeals Judge Diane Wood told prosecutors. "I'm not sure what your actual theory in this case is."
TalkLeft has a very well done rundown of the case.
Now what makes this disturbing is it's not the first time the GOP has used the US Attorney's office, just in the State of Wisconsin to do their political bidding. They tried and failed to get Milwaukee voter fraud allegations prosecuted that turned out as most GOP allegations do, to be bunk.
The point harkens back to the partisan nature in which the DOJ has operated.
Take a look at this list of local public elected officials prosecuted by the Bush DOJ from 2001-2006. Take a look at all those Ds for Democrats. Either Democrats are the most corrupt group ever or Bush is totally going after political enemies to have complete control over everything in this country.
I can't recall a DOJ that was ever this partisan before. Even under Bill Clinton, his own appointee Janet Reno greenlighted the Investigation into Clinton's Whitewater dealings.
But as it turns out most of these DOJ officials are ideologues. Part of the machine that is the Christo-facist Right. Graduates of dubious Universities such as Regent which is a newer college controlled by Pat Robertson type evangelicals that teach a certain mindset rather than challenging their students with multiple perspectives. There are 150 of these graduates working in Bush's DOJ as we speak.
They are not educated in a way that promotes careful deliberation or even respect for the law. They know only God's law and just as Bush continues to usurp the Constitution, they are doing the same in making the DOJ just another weapon in the Republican Party's arsenal.
The DOJ has been prosecuting all the Democrats it can on the local level to get them ejected from office and make the Democratic party appear corrupt to build a longterm majority for Republicans. After all it's usually local officials that step up and run for larger offices later and this is stopping many candidates and killing their credibility before they even get that far. For non-elected officials, the DOJ keeps tabs on protesters and puts them on "terrorist watch lists".
As I have said before, the actions of Rove and Bush make Watergate seem pretty tame.
It's no wonder why the only people that are doing investigations that anybody is approving of are the Democrats. It's been just three months in power and every branch on the tree which Dems have shook has seen countless scandals fall out. Imagine how many there might be after two years of this!
The approval of Congress is up to 40% the highest it's been in over a year. Let's just hope that as the approval trajectory for Congress moves higher in light of their investigations and finally showing some backbone to this Administration, that they continue to uncover and hopefully derail the grand design that Rove implemented by making the DOJ and even the GSA work as RNC political departments.
-Rp
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