Tell that to Alberto Gonzalez and crew.
Yeah, I hear this Atchison guy was actually one of the people Alberto wanted to fire until the Democrats got all obstructory. Way to drop the ball, Dems.
Now mind you, I just made that up but if it were true, boy, would there be egg on BrainGlutton’s face. Not to mention Pelosi’s.
I’d be a lot more receptive to a different headline here, BG, *if * it was supported with relevant facts.
-
It’s now pretty clear that the DoJ has been playing politics with its employment practices, to some extent. There is some evidence that this is true.
-
In the process of doing so, it has done things like hire lots of graduates of the admittedly-religious Regent University. How Pat Robertson's law school is changing America. (150, less a few after Gonzo-gate). Perhaps an ill-advised plan, perhaps more partisan than previous administrations, but not a smoking gun; heck–not a gun at all here.
-
This has resulted in conservatives being hired or retained as Assistant U.S. Attorneys based on their political views instead of their qualifications. **This is an important part of the argument, and so far I’ve seen no proof of it. **
-
This guy was one of those conservatives that was hired or kept on because of his political views **and ** he was not as good as other candidates; or there was some evidence of his need to fuck five year olds that was known to his boss (a political appointee), and he was kept on to avoid scandal (I don’t believe for a second that they couldn’t find another conservative to fill his job). This is the most important part and I’ve seen no proof of it, either.
In fact, the guy has apparently been an Assistant U.S. Attorney for at least 20 years, so I don’t think the blame for his retention can be laid easily on any one administration. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/247488.html
In the meantime it’s just another sad story.
Two quick points:
-
A question for Jodi, Gfactor, and anyone else who knows: I get the point about AUSAs being more-or-less non-political … it’s the same sense that any career at-will government employee avoids rocking the boat on the party in power’s sensibilities, and otherwise ignores politics. But exactly what relationship, if any, does Atchison and the related Federal attorneys have to The Bitch From Regent U.? I cannot help but wonder if there’s a connection there.
-
Mr Moto: I’m surprised that you regard the ACLU as a political organization. I have a few dozen sarcastic remarks about the putative Republican disregard for human rights that I am not going to make. Instead, I’m going to ask you to explain why you equate Atchison’s being a registered Republican with your example’s ACLU membership. I honestly hope you can avoid digging a hole for yourself with the answer. But I do very much want to know.
This was unnecesary. The fact that you started a thread about it made it clear enough. :rolleyes:
It’s a little more complicated than that, though not much. There is an expectation that an AUSA (or an assistant AG at the state level, or an assistant DA at the local level) will separate his or her personal political activities (like campaigning for a candidate) from their professional activities. No canvassing in the office, for example. Frequently, that separation is required by law or by office policy. In turn, it is mostly understood that the US Attorney or the AG or the DA will turn a blind eye to those personal political activities – assuming they don’t include campaigning directly against your incumbent boss, which is your right but is rarely smart (though it does still happen in cases of hated/incompetent bosses). Many of these US Attorney offices are so large, and the actual US Attorney so removed from the day-to-day running of the office, that he or she may never even know all his/her employees, much less their policital stances. For example, the US Attorney’s office in Seattle has 64 AUSAs. The US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles has 260 AUSAs.
There doesn’t seem to be any connection. As Gfactor said, it appears this guy was an AUSA for more than 20 years. AUSA jobs are considered pretty presigious, good jobs with decent salaries. They are hard jobs to get and the people who get them tend to keep them. The very fact that the guy was an AUSA for 20 years indicates he never rocked the boat politically. His boss, the US Attorney (whoever that is, can’t be arsed to look it up), may not even have known this guy at all. So the political angle is a complete stretch – such a stretch as to be laughable, in fact.
She certainly was not around when he was hired. She didn’t graduate from law school until 12 years after he became an AUSA. I don’t think there’s been any reporting about decisions to keep or jettison career AUSAs for political reasons. It seems like a waste of time, really. They don’t have much discretion. If they get a boss who wants to pursue political cases, they can do the work, file a complaint, or move on.
And on preview, what **Jodi ** said.
That’s not a partisan affiliation. How do you know he wasn’t Republican?
Tried to edit the last post but accidentally double-posted.
Both are organizations each man was shown to be a member of - and both have no relationship to the sexual abuse of children other than those members that did so.
I could have picked a Rotarian or a Jaycee, had I searched, I’m sure. Like I said, this was a local and recent case.
I was merely using this point to show how absurd this line of thinking was.
And I can’t prove to the satisfaction of this board (namely, with a cite) that the man I mentioned was a Democrat or Republican (though knowing the area, I do know the answer to that question). I don’t think it matters much either way, for the reasons I spelled out above.
I believe that most of the prosecutors who have been disbarred and jailed in the past few months have been Democrats.
Cite?
Mr. Moto, just to clarify: The post you’re responding to was from Polycarp and was erroneously quoted by me. Then I tried to edit my post to remove that quote from the end and found I had missed the edit window.
Ok. This time I really fixed it. I hope.
Just to clarify - I didn’t bring that example up as any kind of equivalence or anything of that sort. I just wanted to point out the absurdity of using the bad behavior of a member of a group to say something about the group as a whole.
Now, if there are lots of incidents, if there is some sort of pattern, or if it is disproportionate, I could maybe see it. But that hasn’t been shown by the OP, and I found out that absent some sort of study or investigation, it’s mighty hard to prove on the fly here.
This is about as valid a jab at the Republican Party as would be pointing out that Ted Bundy was a Republican.
One is most?
The thing is that for the last couple of decades many Republican politicians have been accusing Democrats of being soft on crime and immorality. They say that Democrat policies promote crime and immorality that people should vote Republican to combat this. So it’s a legitimate hit that Republicans deserve to take when it turns out that many Republicans are not only soft on crime and immorality but are themselves committing immoral crimes. It’s fair to judge people by the standards they voluntarily placed upon themselves.
Except there is no evidence this guy is a Republican politician, active in politics. He’s a poor mensch caught up in his own twisted problems.