The reasons for the attorney firings turns out to be more of the same, piled higher and deeper:
It’s becoming one of the central rules of the U.S. attorney purge scandal: whatever “performance related” complaint the administration claims as the justification for a U.S. attorney’s firing, it’s actually an area of performance for which that U.S. attorney was lauded.
In this instance, the White House has said that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was removed in part due to his handling of voter fraud complaints. That’s backed up by the numerous instances of powerful New Mexico Republicans (including Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM)) complaining to Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush about Iglesias’ decision not to prosecute certain cases of voter fraud.
What does this mean? It means that Iglesias must have been lauded by the Justice Department for his handling of voter fraud cases. And not just lauded — but cited as an example for U.S. attorneys across the country.
As I noted in an earelier thread, I have learned that with this administration, you look for the simplest and most base explanation for their behavior. In this case, the memo stating insufficient loyalty will suffice. The prime sin in this administration and with this current GOP (hell, the only real sin) is insufficient loyalty.
Every other excuse for the attorney firings is turning out to be nonsense, and insufficient loyalty seems to be the only reason I can come up with at this point. The only question that remains is how the insufficient loyalty was manifesting itself in such a way that these attornies needed to be removed. Was it the CIA bit? Voter fraud?
I am sure we will find out in a few weeks, after we have gone through several more iterations of official administration excuses.