It's Tough to Defend These Guys Sometimes

Patterico has an excellent post that describes the way I feel about the Administration and the U.S. attorney kerfluffle.

While I know that the President has the right to fire any political appointment at any time (which the U.S. attorneys are), it's difficult to defend their actions when the Justice Department seems determined to load the gun and hand it to our opponents to shoot this Administration in the foot (or maybe the head, given the news that the Senate voted to revoke the Bush administration's authority to fill U.S. attorney positions without Senate confirmation).

Commenter WLS does a good job explaining why the arguments against the firings are all smoke and mirrors. He/she is evidently someone who has worked in the DOJ and knows the way it operates. So, when you hear that Patrick Fitzgerald was on a list as "not having distinguished himself", know that being a good prosecutor means he probably didn't take care of the administrative duties of running the office.

WLS links to this New York Times article and another link which seems to be down currently (will update ASAP) to back up what he/she says.

In short, the smear job being done by Democrats and others is despicable (and predictable), but the administration is doing an extremely poor job defending itself. And that makes it harder for the rest of us to defend them.

UPDATE: Patterico has made a separate post giving WLS more of a chance to defend the administration.