Polemic®

Isn’t this sort of like putting Al Capone in jail for tax evasion?

Washington has its own rules, I guess. You can stretch the Constitution to its limits, but proceed at your own peril after mildly powerful people’s jobs.

I’m not exactly sure how I would handle a corruption case against a member of another party if I was a U.S. Attorney. If you speed it up before an election it’s political, but not doing so just to avoid looking “political” is unethical. Same problem with people in your own party. It’s a tough call.

What’s not tough is doing it differently because you get a call from a purely political member of your party asking you to do it differently for their partisan advantage. At minimum, doing so should result in disbarment. Anyway, if the politicians don’t like how you do things–something you should have plenty of time to establish before you get nominated to such a high post–they should not vote to confirm you (assuming that vote occurs).

Honestly, to me it’s less shocking that this kind of thing goes on that, say, Ken Blackwell making sure heavily Democratic precincts don’t have enough voting machines, but this is clearly against the Washington code, and it could result in big people going down.

Bush and Cheney are immune from impeachment because Clinton was impeached (and so if it was wrong to do to a Democrat, yet it’s done, it’s wrong to do it to a Republican, so don’t do it), but this time Rove might go down, and Gonzo is probably toast.