Prosecutor Firings:
A Political Game

Apr 2, 2007

Congressional Democrats are investigating the firing of eight federal prosecutors by the Justice Department.

They say the prosecutors were fired because they were either investigating Republicans for corruption or refused to investigate Democrats before the last elections. They are pressuring Bush to remove Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They are threatening to issue subpoenas to Karl Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

These fired federal prosecutors are being held up as fighters against corruption, because they carried out a couple of high profile investigations and trials.

But what federal prosecutors normally do is prosecute small-time drug dealers, never touching the really big time operators. They don’t touch the big-time traffickers, businessmen, banks, and real estate operators who make the big money. Or they go after immigrants by claiming they don’t have required documents, thereby paving the way for businesses to virtually enslave their workforces. Or they attack ordinary people in some other way.

As for corrupt politicians and officials, just about the only time they go after one of them is when they have already been exposed in the news media. This is why one of these prosecutors went after former congressman Duke Cunningham.

In fact, the only reason the Democrats are making a big deal about the fired prosecutors is because it is a way of avoiding a confrontation with the Republicans over something of substance. It’s a way of covering up for the fact that the Democrats have not proposed to repeal one single Bush tax cut to the wealthy and big corporations, not to speak of stopping the war in Iraq, among other things.

This latest scandal is just a political game in which Democrats and Republicans try to position themselves for the coming elections.