Justice Department Needs New Priorities, Not New Prosecutors

Earlier this month, the U.S. Justice Dept. asked seven U.S. attorneys across the country to step down from their positions. Critics of the Bush administration, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, have since questioned the move, noting that it seems to have been politically motivated.

The Bush administration counters that these U.S. attorneys were fired because their priorities were out of line with administration policy. Specifically, the DOJ told the New York Times that the prosecutors were being replaced "based on a review of their performance in carrying out Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's violent crime priorities."

According to the DOJ, one U.S. attorney was fired specifically for her poor record in prosecuting violations of federal weapons laws.

Still, while a president may appoint federal prosecutors who share his priorities as previously appointed U.S. attorneys' terms expire, it's rare that a U.S. attorney is dismissed without cause...

One reason for that may have been that in the past, the president's appointments for the position had to be confirmed by the United States Senate within 120 days. A president still at least had to abide by the pretense that federal prosecutors served the law, not the president. A wholesale dismissal of attorneys appointed by a prior administration would be met with skepticism in the Senate.

But that's not the case anymore. In March 2006, President Bush signed the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. Included in that bill was a provision allowing interim U.S. attorneys appointed by the president to serve indefinitely without Senate confirmation. This means that the prosecutors appointed by President Bush to replace those he just fired will be able to serve out the remainder of his term without being subjected to scrutiny from the Senate.

All of this grows even more troubling when you consider what the priorities of the current Justice Department actually are. Attorney General Gonzalez himself, for example, has that the "top priority" of his tenure at the Justice Department would be, of all things, the prosecution of pornography. Not child pornography, mind you. Regular, adult porn--the kind starring and bought, produced, and sold by consenting adults.

Earlier this month, federal officials arrested the founders of Neteller, an overseas online payment processor, while they were in the U.S. to switch planes. They were arrested because Neteller was allowing its U.S. customers to use the service with online gambling sites. It's the third time U.S. officials have arrested foreign citizens in a U.S. airport on online gambling charges, despite the fact that in all three cases, the suspects were citizens and residents of foreign countries where online gambling is perfectly legal.

The Justice Department is now investigating U.S. firms and/or investors for even doing business with overseas gambling operators.

Last week, federal officials raided several medical marijuana dispensaries in southern California, all legal under state law. Federal law enforcement seized marijuana plants and medical marijuana, but also the medical records of their clients, many of them cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis patients. It's just the latest in a series of raids that have gone on since California legalized medical marijuana in the mid-1990s. This has been another law enforcement priority of the Bush administration: aggressively enforcing federal drug laws, even in states that have decided to give their citizens a bit more pharmacological freedom.

Perhaps the best example of the Bush administration's law enforcement priorities is Mary Beth Buchanan, formerly the U.S. attorney in the Pittsburgh area.

Buchanan's most famous case as attorney general was "operation pipe dreams," in which some 2,000 law enforcement officers spent $12 million in taxpayer dollars collaborating to arrest 55 people for selling glass-blown bongs over the internet. The trophy in those arrests was actor/comedian Tommy Chong. Despite having no criminal record, Buchanan went after Chong with zeal, because, she said, he had glamorized the use of marijuana in his movies. Chong received the harshest sentence of any of those arrested.

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