Topic: Newsmax
The 8-equals-93 meme won't die. The resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has given the ConWeb the opportunity to revive it yet again.
An Aug. 27 NewsMax article by Ronald Kessler stated:
To be sure, Democrats manufactured a scandal by pouncing on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys to create the impression that the Justice Department and the White House did something improper. In fact, the firings were no more improper than the Clinton administration’s dismissal of 93 U.S. attorneys in 1993.
Like Cabinet officers, U.S. attorneys are political appointees serving at the pleasure of the president. Moreover, a fair reading of the e-mails relating to the firings makes it clear that, rightly or wrongly, the eight were singled out because of job performance.
Kessler doesn't mention that the "job performance" issue has been largely discredited (as we've detailed).
In an Aug. 28 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah asserted the Bush administration's firing of those attorneys was "a non-offense," adding:
The day Bill Clinton assumed the presidency in 1993, he fired all 93 U.S. attorneys. No one asked why. No major news stories resulted. No one called it "the January Massacre." No one accused Clinton of shenanigans (except me, because I knew what he was really doing).
Farah doesn't share with his readers was Clinton was purportedly "really doing" by replacing the prosecutors.
And then there's NewsMax's E. Ralph Hostetter, who offers his own, er, unique version of events in his Aug. 29 column:
President Bill Clinton dismissed all 72 U.S. district attorneys from the previous administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush. No reasons for dismissal were given and none were required. This was his prerogative.
The case of Gonzales' removal of seven U.S. district attorneys has been expanded into one of the largest congressional investigations since Watergate. The present investigation was designed to follow the "successful" pattern of the Valerie Plame case where presidential adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney were to be the selected targets.
Hostetter can't even get his numbers right -- he's spouting a 7-equals-72 meme.
