If anyone still thinks there is something we consider good, much less holy--like the independence of the judiciary from the crassest of partisan politics--that this administration won't trash in pursuit of their warped nineteenth-century social darwinist manichean (etc. etc.) worldview, I'd love to know what it would be.

Bushco delenda est

I don't think your proposal has much merit. Others have already pointed out some of the problems. There's already a decent check with the requirement of Senate approval. A sad fact is that a politically motivated Senate would have no problem approving of a politically motivated group of prosecutors.

I'll look at the situation from another viewpoint.

A while back when the FBI raided some congressional offices Josh Marshall expressed disdain at the objections some congress members raised to the raid - as if it represented a breach of the separation of powers. I didn't mention this at the time but for me I could see a great flaw in our system of government that the current Bush group was quite willing to exploit.

With Bush people there's the sense of a childhood bully with respect to power. "You and what army?" Just as Bush is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces he's also the controller of the federal policing forces. So Bush's federahlies can make investigations, interrogations and raids at will but who or what group has the power to make raids on suspected Bush malfeasance? No one as far as I know. It's the old line "who polices the police?"

Praising "checks and balances" is fine but there's no real balance in the branches of government to check and enforce. I'm just a distant viewer on this subject so my expertise is nonexistent. I realize that Congress and the courts have subpoena power, which for average people is likely enough power, but for the executive branch that doesn't seem to be enough.

There's the concern about invoking a "constitutional crisis." I think that concern is an expression of my point. There's limited ability to find malfeasance within the Bush government and even less ability to prosecute and punish it. There's impeachment but as has been demonstrated so clearly in the last decade, that's much more a political operation than a judicial-policing one.

"You and what army" is something that someone like Bush and the Bush group, with its "commander-in-chief" fetish, can certainly relate to.

Politics is not a bad thing. We elect presdents to carry out their views of policy. This includes U.S. Attorneys. It is obvious that the fault is first and foremost with the American people. Even if Gore won in 2000 Bush was reelected in 2004. Congress which is supposed to be the primary check on the president had no interest in that task and until last year was not held to account for their failures.

We can't expect to make a nirvana by removing politics from all things government.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

How about this:

Every appointment must be confirmed by the Senate (within certain broad categories), but removal must also be confirmed by the Senate. Consider it a sort of vote of no confidence.

As there are hearing to confirm so there could be hearings to remove. The Supreme Court has ruled many times that political appointments are perfectly valid and the winning party has the right to toss out anyone with a political appointment from the prior administration. So I don't think legislation to fix that is going to get anywhere.

The real issue is that congress hasn't been doing its oversight job for many years now and thus there are no checks on executive overreach. There have been no "checks and balances". We'll see if the Dem majority can restore some of the lost function to congress.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

An appointment of 10 years guarantees that there will be fewer defense attorneys available.

Some of the best defense attorneys are prior prosecutors who are reaching for redemption!

As told to me by a federal prosecutor, “the judicial process does a poor job of identifying and outing the innocent swept up by the system!”

-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

Yep, lousy idea. Note that Gonzales, the current fall guy for Bush, was his pretend peace offer for those who found Ashcroft an imposition on our liberties, and all that after Gonzales's known role in articulating the consensus within the administration backing up Yoo's madness.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Ah, the Promised Land of Depoliticization... I'm always amused at calls of this sort, because don't we want politicians -- including prosecutors -- to be responsive in some sense to what the people want? It's the abuse of power -- more precisely, the hidden actions that the public wouldn't approve of if they knew -- that become the problem, but those would happen no matter whether USA's are appointed for life or 10-year terms or elected or what. It's all about putting in decent people into those posts, and then making sure that someone (the press, the Congress) is watching them -- not "depoliticizing" things. Heck, here in Manhattan, Bob Morgenthau stands for election every 4 years. It doesn't get any more "politicized" than that. But he's a man of integrity, and he does the job well (and, accordingly, has been overwhelmingly re-elected time after time).

If the idea

is to depoliticize the process, I'm rather against it.  Politics is not and evil thing, in an of itself.  There may be a good reason for a a fixed term of office however, and for taking that fixed term of office outside the cycle of presidential politics.  So, why not five years instead of ten?

1. Restore Senate Consent.  Removing it was a stupid idea and even this venal administration is willing to give it up in the reauthorization of the so-called "patriot act".
2. Set the fixed term of office for United States Attorneys at 5 years.
1. IF the President is reelected and is satisfied with his first term appointments, he can reappoint the same persons, and, should the Senate remain in the hands of the party which confirmed the appointments in the first place, re-confirmation should be pro forma.  IF there is any "funny business" the opposition in the Senate can make a stink, even if it cannot successfully block or force a reappointment.
2. IF the President is reelected but the Senate control changes hands, the President can reappoint or not reappoint, but power is shared, and if there are certain United States Attorneys who have been too political or too political in the wrong way, the Senate can force more reasonable appointments acceptable to both sides.
3. IF the President does not run for reelection or runs and loses, there would be a holdover period of a year.  I suspect that a number of the United States Attorneys would use parts of that year to return to private life as soon as they had a private life to which to return, so the transition process would begin as soon as the results of the election were known.  Those who were in the middle of prosecuting important cases could have the satisfaction of completing cases important to them, and the incoming administration, working in congress with the new Senate could have a less rushed, more orderly transition to the new system. 
4. Once the system was fully operational, the process of appointing United States Attorneys would be continuous and to some extent removed from the exigencies of immediate political concerns while not removed from politics entirely.  Ideally, professional organizations like the American Bar Association would be in a position to evaluate appointees' qualifications the way they do the appointment of judges.  This would remove the temptation to appoint Rovian hacks.  The fact that the replacements didn't happen all at once would allow groups representing the public interest (all spectra, from MoveOn to the American Enterprise Institute) to make their concerns part of the public debate.

The ideas ain't perfect, but then neither am I.  :-)  But I think they would lead to a more transparent, publicly responsible process.

aMike

TomW: "There is only one defense against political exploitation of prosecutorial power, the actions of the political opposition." Maybe I'm hypersensitive to efforts always to blame the Democrats, but here we are with all the Democratic outcries, and it's not effective because of who has power. Isn't there another defense, called voters, we should worry about? Stop expecting more godlike leaders and start mobilizing to political change.

Maybe that's at heart why the left is so eager to blame Gore and Kerry for losing: it beats accepting responsibility for not gearing up. It even is self-reinforcing. If we're jaded and can't find the candidates pure enough, so we let them lose, we need better candidates. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

While many find this episode of the Bush gang family "buying" themselves prosecutors disgusting and typical of the authoritarian tactics they have used for the last six years and longer, I have to say the reactions from some unlikely sources have given me renewed confidence about our system of government. You see for a long time I thought that the advocates of bipartisanship, Lieberman, the Blue-dog democrats, Broder, Breaux, Susan Collins, Landrieu were just full of crap. But hearing their scathing denunciations of this hyper-partisan attempt by the right to "fix" verdicts, i guess I was just plain wrong.