Particularly revealing:
[quote]U.S. attorneys are usually appointed by the president and require Senate approval. They typically serve the same term as the president that appointed them, and are replaced when a new president is elected.
However, a provision in the Patriot Act that was revised last year allows the Attorney General to appoint interim U.S. Attorneys for indefinite terms when vacancies arise, without Senate confirmation. Filling interim vacancies had been the responsibility of the district court.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., criticized the Bush administration yesterday for “pushing out U.S. Attorneys from across the country under the cloak of secrecy.”
“We don’t know how many U.S. Attorneys have been asked to resign – it could be two, it could be ten, it could be more. No one knows,” she said in a statement.
Feinstein said the administration was abusing its executive power by trying to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. She and two colleagues proposed legislation yesterday to restore appointment authority to the district court when a vacancy occurs and an interim leader is needed.
Lam is one of several prosecutors who have either resigned under pressure or been told to leave in recent months. [/quote]
Looks like more Republican abuses of our republic a la Plame. She went after their boy and she got punished for it. I find the official reason for her dismissal comical:
[quote]Lam, a Bush appointee who took the helm in 2002, was targeted because of job performance issues – in particular that she failed to make smuggling and gun cases a top priority, said the official, who declined to be identified because Lam has yet to step down.
[…]
When she took over, Lam made it clear that she planned to focus less on low-level smuggling cases in favor of public corruption and white collar crime, which would mean fewer but more significant prosecutions.
[…]
Lam, 47, has been criticized by members of the Border Patrol agents union and by members of Congress, including Vista Republican Darrell Issa, who accused her office of “an appalling record of refusal to prosecute even the worst criminal alien offenders.” [/quote]
Since Bush was my governor in Texas, he has always opposed the more conservative elements in the Republican party by taking a soft stance on illegal immigration. Well smuggling and drugs are the inevitable result of a wall-less, open border. Does the Adminstration really expect us to believe they are dismissing her because she is soft on prosecuting the crimes they know will result from their own policies? Idiotic.