Barring a substantive showing that someone was prosecuted on orders from above who really shouldn’t have been, or that on orders from above someone failed to be prosecuted who really should have been, there’s nothing there but policy disagreements and partisan posturing.

There has been no substantive showing of criminality. Had there been, it could go directly to the court system. Instead we get to watch the usual hyperbolic partisan attempts to force technical process crimes through demagogic hearings that are devoid of the normal protections and checks of the judicial process. Herings designed more for pot-stirring campaign purposes than anything else. But without a showing of criminality (and I have yet to see anyone cite a statute along with evidence that would indicate same has been violated) it’s just another damn political multi-ring circus, with separate dog & pony shows for each committee chair.

And I could run through eight years of similar observations from the Clinton years, when the GOP was doing the same damn thing, often starting from more solid (but still frivolous and partisan and non-criminal posturing) ground. I knocked it then too.

Nope, those who want to attack will always pick up the nearest handy object to do so, which is the point of my piece that I linked, originally written over a decade ago, during the Clinton years.

If it were solely Democrats that had problems with Gonzalez and distrusted his testimony on this you would have much more of a point. But it isn’t. The firings of Lam after her prosecution of Cunningham (And the fact that the investigation of who else might be involved was ongoing.), Iglesias and Graves for refusing to file weak voter fraud cases where they would have been politically advantageous and the appointment of the truly underqualified Schlozman in an end run around Congress to take Graves’ place all point to questionable if not illegal motivations in the case.

I have deleted all the comments on this thread where people were calling other people names. Those who don’t like Shaun posting on “The Moderate Voice” get the same answer as those who don’t like me posting on “The Moderate Voice” or who don’t like David, Michael, or Dr. E. posting on “The Moderate Voice”: TOUGH. Live with it. Or not. It is Joe Gandelman’s exclusive decision who is allowed to post on TMV. If you disagree with a person’s posts, feel free to express your disagree with their ideas. If you think that there is an imbalance on TMV, that is also fair ground (though some may not be interested in discussing it), but it is not fair to go the next step into calling names and pasting labels on individuals. You are not free to call people “idiots”, compare them to nazis, or spew any of the other garbage comments that infested this thread for some inexplicable reason.

If there is further name-calling or further attempts to argue that name-calling is justified, then the comments will be deleted without any further warnings and the accounts responsible may be banned. To those who think this policy unfairly infringes on their “right” to keep carping about individual TMV contributors that they dislike, bummer. That’s the way it is. Your complaints about individual TMV contributors that you do not like have been heard, considered, and rejected. Now you can either move on or move out.

Enough. It’s done. Comment on the story itself (Gonzalez’ resignation) or do not comment further on this thread.

When no other evidence is readily available, circumstancial evidence becomes less, as you put it, ‘bizarre’. .That’s why there is so much emphasis on the APPREARNCE of propriety, in addition to actual propriety in situations where trust is tantamount.

Trust is often the yardstick by which a leader is rated as successful or unseccessful. Nowhete is ti more important to establish trust than in governement. Otherwise, what happens is exactly what is happening. now. suspicons and circumstncial evidence erode the institutions of society.

‘There is no evidence’ just doen’t cut it after the circumstantial evidence rises to a certain level, and society is torn apart by suspicions.

This isn’t a Dem/Rep issue. It’s an issue of a governemtn not being trusted by the people it governs. That’s serious for any sociey, and it would be foolhardy to dismiss it lightly, IMO.

BTW, “Guilt’ and ‘innocence’ are legal cncepts, and don’t necessaritly reflect actual guilt or innocence. In fact, savvy practioners can use laws to obscure truth, as well as discover it.
Sometimes, occasions arise where the’truth’, that old-fashioned concept, really matters, Sometimes it matters enough to forego “there is no evidence’ in favor of using whatever means there are to hunt for the “truth’.

I have no way of knowing what the truth here is.
When I think about the kind of country my gandchildren will inherit, though, I’d sure like them to know more than just ‘there was no evidene’. I would like them to be able to trust.

I’m completely satisfied with the argument I’ve been making here–that politically motivated prosecutions are a bad thing. I provided some links in support of my argument.

There’s been plenty of other discussion of issues like obstruction of justice and stonewalling.

If you’re satisfied with your argument, that’s okay with me.

And thanks to Joe Gandelman for providing this forum!!

And yes, I said much the same thing when Clinton was being pursued by the rightwingnuts.

No indication? You can’t be serious. Several prosecutors who just happen to be working on cases involving republicans get fired despite having solid records. The AG has sudden and complete memory lapses, and the president himself steps in to prevent witnesses from testifying under oath. A good deal of upper level DoJ folks take off in the ensuing crapstorm and none of this, not any part of it, strikes you as suspicious? I really just don’t know what to say to that.

Frankly, I expected Gonzo to stick around for the duration. Guess the heat was getting to him.

So, the absence of evidence is itself the evidence….

Bizarro logic.

No, it is not bizarro logic. The reason for a lack of evidence is purposeful stonewalling of an investigation of who was responsible, what their motives were and when decisions were made. Since the White House and Gonzales have done nothing but obstruct investigations then a lack of evidence and a deep suspicion of the legality of the firings based on motivations is reasonable. It is therefore quite reasonable and logical to believe that the stonewalling is its own kind of evidence of wrongdoing.

I don’t have the time for this and don’t want any more of this on the site so some comments after this one will disappear.

While Simon feels that Shaun’s politics are ‘immoderate’, which is likely true….

Not just his politics, but his tone and approach. He has no place on a site such as this, as this post further exemplifies.

my objection to Steck has always been that his online ‘behavior‘ in dealing with others, in a childish fashion, has been immoderate, which is a FAR greater sin than any Shaun commits with his Deadhead political outlooks.

I’ve seen no evidence of that.

Sam -

“If it wasn’t illegal, and it didn’t implicate serious ethical problems, then there’s no “scandal.” Thats the rub Simon right there. There were some pretty serious ethical problems raised by the firings. No one is saying the president didn’t have the legal right to fire them.

The illegality of it was the upshot of Mullen’s post as I read it. And again: to have a scandal in the absence of illegality, you need to adduce serious ethical problems, and there is no serious indication of that.

Davebo said,

[George, my argument throughout this thread is that there was nothing illegal about firing these U.S. Attorneys.] But you can’t say that definitavely. There are laws against obstruction of justice you know. And firing a federal prosecutor is a very effective way to halt ongoing investigations.

Oh, please. That really is absurd: if you’re so desparate for some legal hook that you’re going to assert that the firing violates obstruction of justice, you’re going to be specfic about it: here’s chapter 73. Which provision did the firing violate?

And I didn’t say – you either misrepresent or misunderstand me – anything so broad as “that nothing illegal occurred” – what I said was what you quoted: that firing the U.S. Attorneys was not itself illegal and moreover could not have been: it was authorized by statute, if there were no statute the President would have inherent authority to fire executive actors, and if there were a statute to the contrary, it would be unconstitutional. Indeed, according to Sam, you’re no one, since – Sam’s words not mine – “[n]o one is saying the president didn’t have the legal right to fire them” and that seems to be the upshot of your comments.

Bizarro logic.

George, my argument throughout this thread is that there was nothing illegal about firing these U.S. Attorneys.

But you can’t say that definitavely. There are laws against obstruction of justice you know. And firing a federal prosecutor is a very effective way to halt ongoing investigations.

And since we have the SAIC for the FBI saying that Lam’s firing did just that, hinder ongoing investigations (in at least one instance, and investigation of a US Congressman) there’s smoke.

Add in the refusal of subpeonas, and the mockery that has been Gonzales’ testimony to congress, and your assertion that nothing illegal occurred begins to look, well, to use your own phrase, idiotic.

Thats the rub Simon right there. There were some pretty serious ethical problems raised by the firings. No one is saying the president didn’t have the legal right to fire them. Seriously, find me one person that cares about that and I’ll find you a true leftwing crackpot thats probably illiterate as well.

What I will agree with you is that the left just blindly wanted Gonzales gone without doing the smart thing which is keep going till we find out what actually happened. For a minute there I thought the dems were onto something and actually cared about the real problem, the utter secrecy this administration operates under. But now that Gonzo is out all investigations will stop because the Dems have what they wanted. It was in fact just a witch hunt. A new appointee will fill that role and the cycle will continue.

What we the people want is the why of it. We deserve to know and all this closed door activity from this administration should be an outrage to any citizen that cares about America. Congress needs to quit bending over for the Oval Office. Both parties need to snap the presidents leash hard and get this country back on track.

P-l-e-a-s-e m-o-v-e o-n.

And no, the issue os not just Gonzales – it’s how you can justify having such a blatant partisan water carrier writing on a site that holds itself out as “the moderate voice” – you can’t choose your commenters, but you do choose the people you select as posters. As Jason wrote a couple of days ago,

when conservatives do something bad, there is usually already not one but multiple posts and comments critiquing it already up [at TMV] by the time I get to it. Yet when liberals do it, there are usually zero posts or comments about it until and unless Michael or I write about it. The skew in raw numbers IS relevant to the overall perception of the site as well as to the willingness of people from the minority side to actually participate. TMV right now is becoming as homogeneous as explicitly partisan sides like DailyKOS. The nastiness of the tone isn’t quite there yet, but it is rapidly trending in that direction.

Its really easy to say, “hey, we just focus on the issues and don’t worry about counting posts from left or right” but its a poor fig leaf for covering up the massive imbalance in which issues get covered and how much. The skew in agenda is exacerbated by the massive skew in tone — any conservative who posts or comments on TMV can expect to be ravaged by commenters comparing them to Bush, Cheney and “neocons”. Liberals may face an occasional nasty comment, but they enjoy a mostly supportive base among the other commenters.

This thread has perfectly exemplified it. You have a flagrantly partisan post that fits into an unbroken train of flagrantly partisan posts by that author, at least part of which rests on a demonstrably false premise.

And as for this:

It’s also interesting to me, Simon, that you say you won’t link to TMV because of one writer. If you haven’t noticed we have some 20 people signed up and many of them write center-right posts. It sounds as if you prefer that we only offer on view (yours) and sorry we won’t do that and if you don’t link to us for not doing a site that agrees 100 per cent with you we will just have to live with that — as we CONTINUE to link to, blogroll and quote weblogs from many different viewpoints and run Guest Voice posts from people of all viewpoints who have ideas and seek to present them here.

Joe, that is a cheap shot, and it’s lame. I don’t demand agreement, and for FWIW, I don’t agree with Michael on a lot of stuff, too. You’re blatantly misrepresenting my position.

I’d tell you I advanced an argument in comment #10, but you seem to have found it once you looked.

Your counter-argument seems to be, as they say on the internet, moving the goalposts. Originally you claimed

you’re an idiot. there is no underlying “U.S. Attorneys scandal.”

You seem–it’s a little hard for me to tell in all that obfuscatory language–to be conflating what’s legal with what’s scandalous. Let alone with what’s ethical.

I think any non-lawyer might tell you, the real scandal is often what’s legal.