Oh, They Are Good
All this time, the White House spin machine has been successful in building a wall around the president concerning the prosecutor purge and making the issue all about Deputy Attorney Kyle Sampson and Attorney General Albert Gonzalez.
But then again, the soundbite that they have repeated, ad nauseum, is that the prosecutors "serve at the pleasure of the president." Well, they are going to wish they have never made that part of their damage control strategy since there is one small, tiny, legalistic little detail that we are missing: only the President gets to fire the U.S. Attorneys, not the attorney general or his deputies.
As the DailyKos diarist Mary2002 makes clear, no firing of the US attorney could be made without the direct approval of the president, per constitutional law. If Abu Gonzalez or Kyle Sampson were acting independently in firing those prosecutors, they would have committed a federal crime and should be removed immediately. If they are not charged with a crime, then President Bush himself would have to explain why he approved the removal of eight prosecutors with glowing job performance reviews.
Hey, if criminal testimony from a sitting president was good enough for Bill Clinton, then it's damn well good enough for Bush.