[Miss Marple]

ATTENTION! Rand Beers was employed by the CIA as a career employee, aka CIVIL SERVICE. The President was prohibited, BY LAW, from firing him simply because he was a democrat.

President Bush replaced all of the political appointees in the first year of his administration. Civil Service employees are protected from firing unless there is "cause," such as theft, embezzlement, unauthorized leaking of classified material, etc.

I am getting really tired of seeing this attack on the President for not "firing all of the democrats," when, if he had done so, it would have been grounds for impeachment.

One more time: it is against the law to fire civil service employees because of their political affiliation.

[Taliesan]

I appreciate your point. However, I can't imagine walking into the Oval office and finding out that my "..top deputy on counter-terrorism..." is a guy from the last administration and there is nothing I can do about it. Mechanics aside, this is simply not how it works.

I don't remember any similar pattern of ex-Bush1 employees REPEATEDLY throwing the Clinton administration into turmoil.

Oh, and Richard Clarke? He was Civil Service?