1 Boring Old Man

^{Bush pointing out his higher powers [next post up]}

The firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a confusing issue to me. The emails that I’ve looked through so far in the "dump" are all centered on Immigration Cases, but I suspect that it’s not Immigration that’s at the center of the story – it’s more likely prosecutors who either wouldn’t play ball with other Administration agendae or were dangerous to Republicans. That will emerge in time. But one thing is clear, there was almost no distinction between legitimate Judicial function and partisan political actions. Their firing was political, and much of the email correspondance was about how to cover over the political part.

Harriet Miers, was hardly on the radar until Bush nominated her for the Supreme Court. She was locally famous in Texas where she was the "first woman this-and-that." Twenty years ago, she met George W. Bush, and has been with him in some capacity ever since. Her Supreme Court nomination was typical for Bush, an insider. In her interviews with Congressional leaders, she basically flunked. At least she had the good sense to know it and withdrew, returning to her position as White House Counsel. She resigned on January 4, 2007 with no credible explanation.

As the U.S. Attorney firing question has moved to the front burner, we’ve learned that Harriet Miers is in the center of things. Here’s a small piece, in the lead up to the firings:

"Who will determine whether this requires the President’s attention?" At issue, who, indeed, will decide if  "this will be determined to require the boss’s attention?" In Sampson’s email, we probably find the answer – "Karl’s Shop." Sampson anticipated political upheaval but on November 15th when he was wriring this, it’s clear that he was used to a Republican dominated Washington. In fact, most of their planning for these firings happened before the mid-term elections.

I suspect that Harriet’s abrupt resignation has something to do with her central role in this story – a preemptive casualty. I expect that the real broker here was Mr. Karl Rove, and that "Karl’s Shop" is where the Bush Administration’s pulse is located. We look forward to learning a lot more about "Karl’s Shop" ["another pre-execution necessity"] in the coming days. And as long as we’re musing, who gave the "green light?" The next emails in the set [December 4th] come after said "green light" has obviously already been given. Do you suppose there are a few missing emails? And it might be interesting also to find out if it was "determined" that the "boss" needed to be consulted, and if so, what he had to say. And if it was not "determined" to involve the "boss," who did the determining?…