No surprise here

The orders for the Prosecutor Massacre came right from the White House:

The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.

The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.

Uh-huh. Right. And I am Marie of Rumania.

The White House continued to defend its handling of the dismissals.

“We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion,” Ms. Perino said.

“We stand by the Department of Justice assertion that they identified the seven U.S. attorneys who were removed, as they have said, based on performance and managerial reasons.”

Of course, this is the same Department of Justice that's led by a guy who claims there is no express right to habeas corpus in the United States Constitution, despite that document's explicitness about it: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it”, who set up the Administration's policy of detainee torture, and who already has a history of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That this bunch of criminals is still claiming that these firings were about competence or were performance-related would be mind-boggling for its chutzpah if they hadn't been able to get away with making preposterous claims for the last five years and getting away with it. Chuck Schumer is making all the right noises about compelling White House officials, including Karl Rove, to testify, but whether he'll actually hold their feet to the fire and do anything about it when they lie under oath -- as they will -- remains to be seen. Color me skeptical. The biggest question now is whether the Bush/Cheney cabal is up to throwing both Gonzales AND Rove under the bus in an effort to save themselves.