Fire the Justice Department

...to win the War on Terror:

The Founders separated the power to legislate from the power to prosecute because they understood the combination could lead to abuse. We still recall when John Dingell, then and now a powerful House Chairman, let his staff muscle the Clinton Justice Department to bring more indictments for "environmental" crimes in 1993. The tenor of Mr. Domenici's phone call smacks of the Dingell method.

By contrast, Mr. Gonzales had every right to put new attorneys in place. They are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President, and Senators are wrong to suggest that once appointed they should operate independent of Justice supervision. That's precisely the problem we've seen with "special counsels." Justice could have handled this better by saying it was time for some new energy with two years left in the Administration. Instead, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty claimed the dismissals were performance-related, which invited the attorneys to defend their reputations and Democrats to dig for more nefarious reasons.

By the way, these are the same Democrats who didn't raise a whimper when Bill Clinton's Attorney General Janet Reno sacked all 93 U.S. attorneys in one unclean sweep upon taking office. Previous Presidents had kept the attorneys in place until they could replace each one. That was a more serious abuse than anything known about these Bush dismissals.
Facing a Democratic Congress in its last two years, the Bush Administration is going to be under constant pressure to make concessions on antiterror policy and executive power. The Justice Department needs to be in the vanguard of defending that power, not giving it away to atone for its own blunders.

We could start by sacking the hapless Alberto Gonzales, who has proven as worthless in this position as Janet Reno was, although he's yet to burn as many children to death.

Why does the Bush loyalty umbrella only extend to the incompetent?