NewsBusters gets Busted - The Bogus Defense of the Day, from ConWebWatch

[ck4829]

The claim that the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys is equivalent to the Clinton administration's replacement of all 93 U.S. attorneys -- better known as the 8-equals-93 meme -- is a false analogy. As ConWebWatch has detailed, Clinton's actions were in line with those of Republican presidents who similarly replaced U.S. attorneys appointed by predecessors of another party at the start of their administrations, while the Bush administration is replacing attorneys the administration itself appointed for reasons that appear to be linked to partisan politics -- prosecuting too many Republicans and not enough Democrats, for instance.

The Media Research Center was the ConWeb's most enthusiastic proponent of the 8-equals-93 meme. Since then, the job of defending the Bush administration over the attorney firings has fallen to its blog, NewsBusters -- either rehashing the 8-equals-93 meme or repeating other defenses that are just as dubious.

Chief among the latter is the claim that Carol Lam, the ousted San Diego attorney who prosecuted corrupt Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, didn't aggressively prosecute immigration cases. From a March 23 NewsBusters post by Justin McCarthy praising Fox News' Bill O'Reilly for "finally provid(ing) some perspective" on the firings and repeating O'Reilly's attack on Lam:

The mainstream media hinted that the administration fired San Diego attorney Carol Lam for prosecuting former Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. What they failed to report is that Ms. Lam did not aggressively prosecute illegal alien criminals. Her lax approach concerned even Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein.

In a March 26 post, Ken Shepherd similarly claimed that "Lam's prosecution of immigration cases reportedly bothered the decidedly unconservative Sen. Dianne Feinstein." Shepherd linked to a March 25 Associated Press article that noted Feinstein's concern about Lam's record on immigration cases. But it also included a line that Shepherd didn't pass along to his readers: "Feinstein has said her concerns on that front were subsequently satisfied and that it's 'bogus' to use her letter as evidence supporting Lam's dismissal."

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2007/mrcattorneys2.html

[KharmaTrain]

1. Also...How Long Did These Replacements Take????

And were those 93 replacements confirmed by the Senate? From my preliminary searching it appears it took well over a year for the Procescutors to be replace in '93-'94, all were confirmed by the Senate (almost unanimously in all cases) and none were moved in to either take over and existing case or quash an ongoing investigation (if so, we would have saved ourselves millions in the squandered witch hunts called Whitewater and all that other bullshit). Compare this to the abrupt firing of select prosecutors who were in swing states and based on the flimsy premise of "performance" in all cases despite records that said differently.

The real dishonestly in the Lam situation is how this regime has done little in prosecuting Immigration cases...that's the reason you have the racists and Minutemen running around the Southwest cursing booooshie as much as anyone. There has been zero prosecution against the real criminals in this immigration scenario...the businesses that hire them.

The hypocrisy of how the Repugnicans would have dealt with this had this been a Democratic President pulling this shit compared to their tin-horn frat boy puppet is so obvious, yet the corporate media wouldn't dare bring this up yet expose another one of their own biases.

[Toots]

2. Didn't it actually comeout in a hearing that her office prosecuted more

illegal immigration cases than any other office in the nation? Something like over five hundred cases in 2006 up over a hundred from 2005. In fact her office received numerous commendations and awards from Border agents and Customs for doing just that.

[ck4829]

3. I think so.