March 22, 2007

Fred Hiatt still doesn't read his own paper.

It would not be acceptable for Mr. Bush to fire the attorneys to short-circuit prosecutions of political corruption among Republicans. So far there's no evidence that he did,

Washington Post March 19, 2007:

Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants" in a criminal investigation of defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who had just quit as the CIA's top administrator amid questions about his ties to disgraced former GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

The next day, May 11, D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel's office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week.

And it goes without saying Fred Hiatt reads Powerline and not Talking Points Memo:

Okay, enough. The president fired US Attorneys to stymie investigations of Republicans and punish US Attorneys who didn't harass Democrats with bogus voter fraud prosecutions. In the former instance, the evidence remains circumstantial. But in the latter the evidence is clear, overwhelming and undeniable.

Indeed, it is so undeniable the president hismelf does not deny it.

The president himself says that in some cases US Attorneys were dismissed because they were too lax in prosecuting election fraud. What he does not say -- but what we know directly from the accounts of the players involved -- is that these were cases in which Republican operatives and activists complained to the White House and Republican members of Congress that certain US Attorneys weren't convening grand juries or issuing indictments against Democrats, even though these were cases where all the available evidence suggests there was no wrongdoing prosecuted. (It's all reminiscent of the bogus voter fraud allegations Republicans got caught peddling in the South Dakota senate race in 2002. Only in this case getting these charges into the press wasn't enough; they wanted to use US Attorneys to actual harrass people or put them in jail.)

Big Tent Dem at Talk Left finds this ghost of Hiatt's past (February 1998):

"The White House should remember that what is driving this story," the Post pronounces, "is not the conduct of Mr. Starr's staff, alleged leaks, supposed media bias or -- in Mrs. Clinton's now famous words -- a 'vast right-wing conspiracy.' Mr. Clinton is the only one who can make this matter go away, and he remains entirely free to do so at any time."

What a disgrace that this guy is connected to one of the most influential Editorial Pages in the country.

I only wish Debra Howell was alive to point out these travesties.