Muckraker Kate Klonick profiled Esther Slater McDonald in this recent post, where among other things she reveals that Ms. McDonald was hired by none other than the infamous Monica Goodling. Which leads to the question, who hired Monica?

The answer is Mary Beth Buchanan, a Bush appointee and the United States Attorney for the western district of Pennsylvania. And if you read her Wikipedia entry you'll see that she could well be the unsung Queen of the Loyal Bushies.

Buchanan is a perfect example of what Paul Krugman was talking about in March of last year in connection with the then-emerging Prosecutors' Purge scandal.

Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he “would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons.” But it’s already clear that he did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons — some because they wouldn’t use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans.

In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance.

Ms. Buchanan has been the driving force behind the harrassment of a number of prominent Democrats in Pennsylvania, most notably against Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht. There's more on that in this TPM Cafe post from testing. The rest of my overview of Mary Beth Buchanan can be found HERE.