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Senate Consternation Process
Dianne Feinstein gets busy undercutting the war on terror at home.
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, February 16, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The House spent this week debating an Iraq resolution that will damage U.S. efforts to fight terror overseas. Never to be outdone, the Senate got busy undercutting the war on terror here at home.
That's one way to view the fight Senate liberals are picking with President George W. Bush over the issue of Justice Department nominations--a battle that bubbled to the surface this week with regard to U.S. attorney appointments. California ringleader Dianne Feinstein is hoping to score a few political shots, as well as give the White House a taste of what's to come in future Senate confirmation brawls. If a little thing like national security gets in the way, so be it.
Ms. Feinstein and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid picked up the U.S. attorneys football in January, after the news leaked that the White House was dismissing seven federal prosecutors. The administration says it's unhappy with these lawyers' performance, and at least it is firing its own appointees. One of Bill Clinton's first acts was to cashier pretty much every sitting U.S. attorney, all of whom had been appointed by Mr. Clinton's predecessors. Nothing in the record suggests either Mr. Reid or Ms. Feinstein were all that cut up over the Clinton dismissals.
This time, however, Mr. Reid is labeling the firings "cronygate," and accusing the administration of ousting capable U.S. attorneys in order to award political allies with plum posts. Ms. Feinstein went further, suggesting the administration's real goal was to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. She noted that a 2006 Patriot Act amendment gives the attorney general--rather than federal courts--the right to appoint interim U.S. attorneys, and to keep those interims in place until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. Clearly, said Ms. Feinstein, the White House intended to pack the Justice Department with shady prosecutors and avoid the Senate altogether.
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