Bill Maher with one of the fired attornies

Bill Maher interviews Iglesias, the fired attorney from New Mexico. (Quick aside: I don't actually like Bill Maher all that much, but being on HBO, he has more freedom to interview whom he chooses and say what he wants, which is why I think you end up seeing him here more than he otherwise would be)

There isn't really any new information there, but it is an excuse to rant on the attorney firings. I think the issue is actually more subtle than it's made out to be. The original action, the firing of the attorneys, was indeed _not_ illegal. Technically, those are political appointees, and they can be dismissed (to use that cringe-worthy phrase) at the pleasure of the President. So what's the issue?

Well, at this point, there are two. The first is that top Justice Department officials lied...most recently under oath...when asked about the dismissals. That, and not the original firings, is potentially actionable. Gonzales lied to Congress. Period. He should be dismissed solely on that basis.

But, there's a deeper point. Even though firing the attorneys for political reasons is not illegal, it's part of a larger effort by the Bush administration to politicize every aspect of government, which is tantamount to destroying it. Yes, we have an adversarial two-party system, but at some level, certain jobs have to be independent and non-partisan in order for government to function at all. The GAO (Government Accountability Office) is a good example of this: we have to have some entity within government that can give impartial accounting information about government finances. It's fundamental to transparency. You can't have those guys living under the threat of being tossed on their asses because they bring up something the White House doesn't like. And, even though no one has been paying attention to them, the GAO has fairly consistently been presenting accurate reports that say Bush is bankrupting government. That information is important.

Similarly, federal prosecutors have to be free to execute the law without fear of retribution when those prosecutions potentially damage one party or the other. It's a fundamental piece of the rule of law. If you don't have that, then you have given the White House the ability to define the law by itself since an unenforced law is no better than no law at all, and you had better believe they are more interested in having their adversaries prosecuted than their own people. Is there any more fundamental way to un-blind justice?

The point is that the system breaks down if you don't have at least some pieces of the system operating in a non-partisan manner. We have checks and balances, but they have their limits. At some point, a sufficiently collusive group of people (e.g., a political party) can quite easily undermine them. Those checks and balances are merely speed bumps and obstacles in the way of government corruption; they are not walls, and they never will be. At some level, you cannot create a system composed of the same people that system tries to protect against that is infinitely resilient. In other words, Americans created a system of checks and balances to protect Americans. They created rules for themselves. And just as they created those rules, they can, with sufficient effort and organization, circumvent, ignore, or otherwise obviate those rules. They are bound by them only insofar as they are willing to be bound by them. The Bush administration has been the most frighteningly vivid example of that this country has, I think, yet seen, and that's a large part of why he is the worst and most dangerous President we've ever had. That he's an arrogant idiot only makes matters worse.

So, can the prosecutors be legally dismissed for political reasons? Can those positions be legally politicized? Sure. But it's crossing a very, very dangerous line to do so, and it's good that someone is screaming about it.