Late last night I applauded the President’s recent statements on the U.S. Attorney controversy and wrote about the need to fight back against baseless partisan attacks. It is imperative that Republicans begin to push back, but it won’t be easy. Just look at Patterico’s latest example of bias from the L.A. Times. It is more than bias, though, it is intentionally misleading the public. Or a headline writer run wild. You be the judge.
The L.A. Times runs an article titled Making a list of reasons for firing U.S. attorneys. The article is designed to fuel the fires of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, by suggesting that the legitimate performance-based reasons offered as a justification for firing the U.S. Attorneys were concocted after the fact. The article is teased on the front page with a blurb reading: “Memos show performance issues were detailed after the fact.” The smaller “deck” headline reads: “Justice Department memos show performance issues were being detailed after the fact in order to justify the terminations.”
…
The conclusion the editors want you to reach is clear: any performance issues were transparently false rationales that were manufactured after the fact.
Of course, as I have noted on this blog, any such conclusion would be utterly false. There are reams of material preceding the firings, which thoroughly demonstrated the Administration’s dissatisfaction with certain U.S. Attorneys.
Read some of the examples Patterico cites of criticisms leveled at Carol Lam (before the firings) for failure to enforce immigration laws and prosecute border crimes. As I quoted Dick Morris in an earlier post saying Republicans should have turned the cases of firings for not pursuing voter fraud cases against the Dems, I wonder why the example of Lam was not turned back on the Dems. Are Democrats saying with their opposition to the firings that they don’t want voter fraud or border crime vigorously investigated and prosecuted? Why are Republicans at least raising that question? Why isn’t the media raising those questions? (Never mind, I know the answer to that one.)
