Another crack in the wall

There was a great story on NPR tonight about the U.S. Attorney purge.

As I've said before, Josh has been all over this story, but sometimes there is no substitute for the audio to really capture the essence of it.

Today's story was about the testimony of James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. The Bushies started out with a story that all the U.S. Attorneys who were fired were canned for performance reasons. Of course, it would have been nice if they'd clued in the people who were supposedly making the decisions before they talked to the people who were being fired, so that they could have their story straight in advance, right?

Still, that seems to pale before the story of what Comey said about all these fired U.S. Attorneys:

On John McKay of Washington state: "I wasn't supposed to have favorites, but John McKay was one of my favorites."

On Daniel Bogden of Nevada: "He is as straight as a Nevada highway and a fired-up guy."

On David Iglesias of New Mexico: "I thought he was a very effective U.S. attorney. He was sort of the Bogden of New Mexico — very straight, very able."

On Paul Charlton of Arizona: "Very smart, very honest and able person, and I respected him a great deal and would always listen to what he had to say."

Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) asked Comey whether, in his view, there were "valid, performance-based reasons" to terminate the attorneys.

"Not in my experience with them," Comey replied.

Still, it's more fun to listen to the audio.