Shades of Tricky Dicky Nixon

The Bush White House sinks ever closer to the stench a la the Richard Nixon presidential years. Now the White House is mired in seeking to fire US prosecutors who have not accorded with various criteria satisfactory to the Republicans.

As the Washington Post reports:

"Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales took responsibility yesterday for "mistakes" related to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year but rejected calls for his resignation from Democrats who accuse him of misleading Congress.

"I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility," Gonzales said. He said he did not know the details of the plan to fire the prosecutors, but he defended the dismissals: "I stand by the decision, and I think it was a right decision."

The remarks came after the Justice Department released e-mails and other documents showing that, despite months of administration statements to the contrary, the White House more than two years ago initiated the process that led to the dismissals, and that the decisions were heavily influenced by assessments of the prosecutors' political loyalty. President Bush and senior White House adviser Karl Rove also separately passed along complaints to Gonzales that prosecutors were not aggressively pursuing voter-fraud cases, officials said."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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