nah

... US Attorneys can be asked to resign at any time for any reason. They are political hires, not civil service hires.

Be careful what you wish for; if you get civil service protections for US attorneys, the kinds of abuses we saw with special prosecutors over the years (think Ken Starr) will be multiplied by 93 ...



I disagree. The way to restrain an overreaching, vigilante, politically driven or out of control DA or USA is via courts as courts can easily throw out any case brought to them if they think they are frivolous or inconsequential. After a few of those and a professional conduct board investigation most of them will learn how to behave responsibly if they want to stay in their jobs.

Of course there will be judges out there who will go with whatever any USA wants them to do no matter what but hopefully they are in minority. Besides one can always appeal.

For cases where a corrupt, political or overreaching DA/USA uses his/her powers to harass people (feeding media frenzy with well placed/timed innuendoes, arranging perp walks, tarring people with secret and aggressive psychological profiling a practice widespread these days in this country far more than it ever was in the old Soviet Union, etc.) simply criminalize these things the way they did in Europe and the problem will be gone. Besides most of that stuff is done to please their political overseers, to ensure that once their temporary USA gig is gone they will have another job in the system. Make them politically independent and the problem will be mostly gone.

Furthermore having an independent and apolitical prosecutorial apparatus is essential to ensure that the government itself stays clean and doesn’t abuse people’s rights.

As things stand now the FBI is secure in the knowledge they they will never be prosecuted by any USA serving at the pleasure of the president when they decide to go Hoover on you. And Hoover they go on people all the time, things have not changed that much since the old days (I know, I have been their COINTELPRO target). Few people would agree that having the FBI the organization with tremendous Stasi like powers and practices be outside independent and effective prosecutorial oversight is a desirable situation.

Similarly police in this country kills people at the rates some 100 time higher that in all Western European countries. Why? Because the prosecutorial apparatus has been thoroughly politicized on the local level. Finding a DA these days inclined or reckless enough to risk to honestly investigate cases of police killing is next to impossible. The results are easy to see. In morgues. 100 times higher killing rates!

The old canard that the prosecutorial apparatus needs to be politicized in order to be responsive to the electorate (see Slate Lithwick's article where that argument is made) is just that, a canard. Making sure that the prosecutorial system is responsive to the wishes of the general public should never be an overriding priority when designing the system. Justice is supposed to more than that, otherwise we would still have public lynching in this country.

DoJ

The original goal of this excersise was to re-acquaint the DoJ with a simple idea that their department is supposed to be APOLITICAL not a personal tool for Mr. Bush. Apolitical in the same sense “justice” in general is supposed to be.

For using the federal prosecutors and DoJ to obtain a political advantage, to get even with political adversaries or to further one’s political agenda has become a completely accepted way of doing business in this country especially under present administration.

I think that goal was accomplished -- it will be a while before they will again start using the DoJ as a political tool and as openly as it has been their custom. Getting rid of that torture shyster would be a nice bonus, personally I’m happy just to see that trademark smirk of his gone.

Still the country needs a more permanent solution to the problem of insulating the DoJ from political pressures. The culprit is the present arrangement under which the DoJ people serve at the pleasure of the president. That’s an old, long outdated feudal British arrangement that by definition invites political abuse (actually by design!) and which has no place in modern democracies. Make the federal prosecutorial system fully independent the way for example they operate in Italy.

This will only make this a more perfect, stronger union. As would adoption of modern arrangements that permit legislatures to remove incompetent governments and modern concepts of legal standing in constitutional controversies.

The country needs to think about convening another constitutional assembly one of these years. It's about time!