POINTING THE WAY FOR PROSECUTORS<\/a><\/span>
Under fire, not in retreat<\/p>\nGonzales’ plan for attorney reviews would further politicize process<\/p>\n
By Andrew Zajac, a national correspondent based in the Tribune’s Washington Bureau
Published June 17, 2007<\/p>\n
Atty Gen. Alberto Gonzales so far has survived a political crisis over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, a rare potential vote of no-confidence in the Senate and numerous calls for his resignation.<\/p>\n
His response? Gonzales recently proposed tightening the leash on the men and women who prosecute federal crimes across the nation.”<\/p>\n
Gonzales described what he delicately calls “a more vigorous and a little bit more formal process” for annually evaluating prosecutors. What that means, as he explained it, is hauling in every U.S. attorney for a meeting to hear, among other things, politicians’ beefs against the prosecutor.<\/p>\n
If that should happen, expect the fair-mindedness and independence Americans still count on from their Justice Department to slip.<\/p>\n
In testimony to Congress and comments at the National Press Club, Gonzales framed the meetings as a way of improving communications. But it also looks a lot like a way to remind recalcitrant U.S. attorneys what the home team expects.<\/p>\n
On Friday, a spokesman for Gonzales insisted in a written statement that the attorney general has no intention of holding one-on-ones with every U.S. attorney.<\/p>\n
“The view of the overwhelming majority of U.S. attorneys is that they do not want a new, formalized review process — including one that might involve annual one-on-one meetings between each U.S. attorney and the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General. We have listened and agree with these views,” the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Impeach Dick Cheney Tomorrow. Impeach George Bush the very next day. His response to his politicization of the Justice department is MORE politics. POINTING THE WAY FOR PROSECUTORSUnder fire, not in retreat Gonzales’ plan for attorney reviews would further politicize process By Andrew Zajac, a national correspondent based in the Tribune’s Washington BureauPublished June 17, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1182,972,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-george-w-bush","category-justice","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}