What did these people do to keep their jobs?
The Capital Times:
The question of whether any of the 85 U.S. attorneys who were not fired by the Bush administration may have engaged in political prosecutions blew open Tuesday, when Wisconsin Russ Feingold and Russ Kohl joined other key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in demanding files pertaining to the botched prosecution of Georgia Thompson.
Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Feingold, Kohl and three other senators have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for documents dealing with the case of the state employee who was tried in a case that played out during the course of the 2006 gubernatorial race in that state. Republicans used the prosecution as part of a television attack campaign aimed at defeating Democratic Gov. James Doyle.
U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic obtained an election-season conviction of Thompson on charges that she steered a state contract to a Doyle donor. But a federal appeals court last week overturned that conviction with a stinging decision that complained about a lack of evidence. One of the appeals court judges said Biskupic's case was "beyond thin."
In this case, the system worked despite the best efforts of Biskupic to pervert justice. But not before Thompson spent time in prison. Thompson's original conviction put a cloud over Jim Doyle's 2006 re-election effort. Doyle was marked as one of the most vulnerable democratic governors in that cycle and the only reason he won was because his opponent, former congressman Mark Green, refused to see that being a Bush clone wasn't exactly the best way to go. While Green tried to make hay with Doyle's supposed 'corruption,' Doyle only had to point to Green's voting record.
Biskupic was a prosecutor who'd apparently passed the Justice Department's political purity test. Is he typical?
That's what a few in congress would like to find out...
[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
