As is the case with all of the president’s cabinet members, U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States. They are appointed to a four-year term, after which they can expect to seek employment elsewhere. It is also customary for all 93 to tender their resignations upon the election of a new administration. In December 2006, seven of the 93 U.S. attorneys were asked to resign (one had been fired previously). This immediately sparked outrage from the Democrats (there’s a surprise) and the print media obligingly went into hyperventilation.

Last week the leadership of the Democratic Party, consisting Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, having grown momentarily tired of trying to convince the terrorists in Iraq that they can win if they’ll only be more patient, turned its attentions to something more domestic: attacking President Bush. Shocking, I know.

One of the eight U.S. Attorneys let go by the Bush administration, that the left is now holding up as a sign of how the Bush Administration is bastardizing the justice system, is U.S. attorney Paul Charlton. Charlton serves in Arizona, whose deserts are frequently used by illegal aliens to cross into the United States. In a meeting with the director of Immigration Security Policy, Charlton offered that he didn’t prosecute illegal aliens until they were apprehended 13 times after the initial removal order. Huh? Maybe Charlton did better with the drug smugglers who cross those same borders? Nope. Charlton doesn’t prosecute in most circumstances unless their hauling more than 500 pounds of dope. Is it any wonder the administration wanted to try someone new?

Another charge is that the Bush Administration was seeking retribution against U.S. attorneys who pursued cases against Republicans. Their proof of this evil agenda is the firing of U.S. attorney Carol Lam, who successfully prosecuted the case against disgraced Republican Congressman Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham. The only problem with this scenario is that the decision to remove Lam occurred four months before the Cunningham scandal began. So unless the Democrats are now claiming the president is endowed with psychic abilities ‘ which I find hard to believe, given that the left loathes to concede that the president has opposable thumbs ‘ their conclusions, just like their policies, don’t hold up.

The Democrats would have us believe there is something particularly nefarious about the president asking eight political appointees to resign from their offices. So concerned was Senator Schumer that he stated in a March 8 letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, ‘While the president has the right to fire U.S. Attorneys, we do not believe the American people are best served if the president chooses to fire U.S. attorneys for political reasons ‘ whether to put in place young ideologues or because he is displeased with the cases the U.S. attorney is pursuing.’

Well, at least Chuck agrees that the president can fire a U.S. attorney at will. Note that in Schumer’s alternate universe, Bush can only be doing one of two things:

a) Removing brilliant, apolitical prosecutors in order to install blindly partisan hacks, or

b) Removing brilliant, apolitical prosecutors in order to prevent the discovery of the Bush administration crimes, which are apparently too numerous to mention in his terse letter to Attorney General Gonzales.

Schumer makes no mention of the fact that should a Democrat become president in 2008 (which, if Schumer has his timing right, will be just about the time his investigation into this matter concludes), no matter how brilliant or how apolitical these current U.S. attorneys are, they will ALL be fired by the incoming administration and replaced with people more in line with their own political leanings.

And that would be perfectly legit ‘ unless, of course, it’s a Republican who takes office in 2008.

‘ Megan Donahue is a junior nursing major. Reviewing ALF IRS form 990: $0. Laptop to write Opinion piece: $1,800. Getting a billion-dollar non-profit to violate the ‘Never Punch Down’ axiom: Priceless.