Topic: Newsmax
In an April 17 NewsMax column, Ronald Kessler allowed GOPAC to make misleading claims about the U.S. attorney firing scandal:
"You put in place this effort to focus on a troop surge and to get some real momentum for the administration's policy in Iraq, and there's some signs that that momentum is beginning to take hold, that there's some success on the ground," Steele said. "And all of a sudden — boom. You take three steps back with something that's within the prerogative of the executive branch to do, and that is to hire and fire those at-will employees for whatever reason.
"Bill Clinton fired 93 of them, for goodness sake, and no one blinked an eye. George Bush fired eight in the second term, and you think it's Armageddon."
Thus, the Democrats turned innocuous, if poorly handled, firings into a front-page story.
As we've detailed, the 8-equals-93 argument is bogus. And both Kessler and Steele ignore the fact that Justice Department offiicals, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have made conflicting, misleading and/or false claims about how and why the attorneys were replaced, which makes things rather beyond "innocuous."
