Executive Weapons

At issue within the noise being made about the Justice Department is whether that part of the Executive Branch and the immense powers contained within it have been used inappropriately by the Bush administration. As you might guess, the evidence points to that very brand of malfeasance.

Dick Thornburgh was Attorney General during the administration of George H. W. Bush. He is testifying this week before Congress that one of his post-AG clients was doggedly pursued by a US Attorney for political reasons: his client was a prominent Democrat.

So why was the case brought? Wecht is a high-profile Democrat, "an ideal target for a Republican U .S. Attorney trying to curry favor with a Department which demonstrated that if you play by its rules, you will advance," Thornburgh said, referring to the U.S. attorney firings scandal. Put that together with the fact that U.S. Attorney for Pittsburgh Mary Beth Buchanan has prosecuted "not one" Republican, while prosecuting Democrats in a "highly visible manner," and you have your conclusion.

Beyond the politicization of the Justice Department, Thornburgh said the root of the problem lay in vague criminal statutes that allowed prosecutors to pursue charges for things that should not rise to the level of a felony. There's an "opportunity for abuse" with those laws, he said, that Congress might consider amending through legislation.

And this is essentially why we've all heard more about US Attorneys in the last few months than we would normally hear over the course of several years. The power of the Justice Department to pressure and disrupt someone's life in pursuit of justice is there for a reason. The Department vested with the power to seek out justice on behalf of the government should be powerful indeed. The real problem is when those powers are fashioned into weapons for work other than what they were intended for, when the plowshares are sharpened into swords. Nothing good can come of that.

Also via the article linked above from TPMMuckraker, you can see video of Thornburgh's testimony.