Almost every time a "fringy" explanation has been offered for Bush administration behavior, you are left a normal reaction of thinking it might be tinfoil hat time. And in normal times, that would be a good reaction.

These are not normal times.

In fact, many times, too many times, the tinfoil hat theory has been proven correct.

Well, Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake goes to the nut of the matter when looking at what might be behind a Rovian political operation to fire prosecutors. First, the 2006 electoral map:


Now, a list of eight of the fired prosecutors and where they served:

David Iglesias (District of New Mexico)
H. E. Cummins III (Eastern District of Arkansas)
Paul K. Charlton (District of Arizona)
John McKay (Western District of Washington)
Daniel Bogden (District of Nevada)
Margaret Chiara (Western District of Michigan)

Carol Lam (Southern District of California )
Kevin V. Ryan (Northern District of California)

6 of the attorneys come from states that are not completely red or blue. The other 2 are from the country’s largest state and a major source of campaign contributions California.

Put this together with the statistic that 80% of the Justice Dept. investigations against politicians were done on Democrats and it has to make you go hmmmmm.

I believe that a few of the prosecutors were fired for ordinary performance reasons. But I also think that the above prosecutors were fired as a part of a political operation by Rove. These prosecutors refused to play ball with the administration in it's "goals" (political goals set by Rove) to use the justice system to target members of the opposing political party, and were thus removed/punished. If this is so, it is wrong and crosses the line between "serving at the pleasure of the President" and being recruted to be a part of the political arm of the President and his political party.