The Pre-Christmas Republicans-firing-Republicans Massacre
December 7th: to many Americans, it’s Pearl
Harbor Day. To seven former U.S. Attorneys, it’ll also be remembered
forevermore as the “pre-Christmas firing massacre“.
Domenici and Wilson try to cut their losses
December 7th: to many Americans, it’s Pearl Harbor Day. To seven former U.S. Attorneys, it’ll also be remembered forevermore as the “pre-Christmas firing massacre“.
What’s unusual about the “pre-Christmas firing massacre” is that it wasn’t triggered by any change in administration. The Republican administration fired seven of its own Republican-appointed prosecutors. Some of the prosecutors have told us they were left angry or puzzled.
But Republicans-firing-Republicans might have amounted to nothing more than a family squabble if it weren’t for all the political innuendos that have been circulating. Maybe, some whispered, these prosecutors hadn’t been doing the Republicans’ bidding. Maybe they were fired for political reasons. Speculation became something more than that yesterday when one of the ousted prosecutors, David Iglesias of New Mexico spoke publicly and said he might have been fired for refusing to cave in to political pressure.
Maybe under oath, Iglesias will reveal the names of those two members of Congress who called him about investigating that Democrat. Somewhere, two members of Congress are probably squirming uncomfortably.
The two members of Congress doing the squirming are Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson. Pete mostly represents the Air Force and whichever oil company took him to dinner last week. Heather ran for re-election by pleading she wouldn’t recognize George W. Bush if he stayed at her house for a month. She was re-elected by 875 votes out of nearly 211,000 - after the last recount.
They were pressuring Iglesias to speed up his investigation of a Dem accused of bid-rigging - but, wasn’t likely to hit the skids before the November elections. They didn’t want to miss the pot versus kettle sound bites.
Posted: Mon - March 5, 2007 at 06:56 AM