U.S. Attorney Firings Had Origins in 2004 Presidential Election

Politico, an online website devoted to politics, has a story that claims that the origins of the firing of the U.S. Attorneys are to be found in the 2004 Presidential election and even perhaps in the 2000 election. The story claims that the Bushies were upset in 2000 when people questioned the black robed coup that led to his becoming President. In particular they were upset that Democrats were arguing that had all the votes of Afro-American voters been counted, Gore would have won Florida.

In order to make sure that such accusations were not made after the 2004 election, the Bushies wanted to use the U.S. Justice Department to gather evidence of what they call "voting fraud", targeting organizations that were registering poor and minority voters. According to the article Republicans kept pushing this theme with the media, but could produce little evidence of such activities. The Bushies hoped that the U.S. Justice Department could provide such evidence. Such evidence could then be used to push for voting restrictions that would make it difficult to register voters opposed to Bush. Restrictions such as voter identification requirements, limiting the activities of organizations engaged in voter registeration, while, at the same time, making sure that such restrictions didn't prevent Republican allies from carrying out their own voter registration drives.

Those U.S. Attorneys who didn't get on the program, especially in "swing" states made King Karl and Bubble-Boy angry. This anger probably intensified when they lost control of Congress in 2006. Lo and behold, we get a bunch of fired U.S. Attorneys for what appears to be crass political reasons.

Bush won by over 3 million votes. Although Democrats may wonder about what happened in Ohio, very few people have argued that the popular vote didn't show a clear Bush victory. Ironically, taking action to avoid so-called "voter fraud" has led to Bush and Rove looking like they are manipulating the U.S. Department of Justice for political reasons.