A few days after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation, the Washington Post reported:
"Administration officials warned yesterday that the president intends to nominate an attorney general who agrees with his policies. 'It is the president's prerogative to appoint someone who shares his views,' a senior administration official said."
This is a strange thing to say, because prosecuting crimes is not supposed to be a matter of policy or politics: prosecutions are supposed to be based on evidence and legal principles. Period.
That aside, did anyone actually need to tell us that President Bush plans to pick someone who agrees with his policies (or politics)? Given what this nation has witnessed -- between the fired U.S. Attorney scandal and the domestic wiretapping issue -- we expect no less (or more) from our president.
Didn't President Bush pick someone who agreed with him when appointing Alberto Gonzales as John Ashcroft's replacement? And what was the result? An attorney general under whom the nation's premier law-enforcement agency seemed to become dangerously politicized.
Some people don't just learn from mistakes. For more details, see BN-Politics' section on the Justice Department and Fired U.S. Attorneys .
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