Firings were "performance related" and that sound bad in anybody's book.

For example, Mr. David Iglesias name, if you read carefully through Mr. Kyle Sampson list, you'll see that originally was in bold characters, meaning he was a "good guy" at the time.
Eventually his name got crossed over and just like that he became a guy with "performance deficiency". This happened after the phone calls he received from Wilson and Domenici.

Now, put yourself in his shoes, and truthfully say what outcome of this "brouhaha" would satisfy you.

There is a PILE of criminality here. The White House reaction to this is INSANE unless they are covering up something BIG.

Unfortunately you have become far too much of a Bush shill to be intellectually honest about the harm done to our country by the rubber stamp GOP congress.

The voters, in their wisdom, chose to toss a lot of GOP members out on their ears, restoring checks and balances to our government. This does not seem to please you, but it certainly pleases me.

It was not all that long ago that we had good government in this country (setting the nonsensical Clinton impeachment aside) under a pragmatic Democratic president and a reform minded GOP congress. Oh well, those good old days have gone off to wherever it is good old days go when they are over, and we are stuck with the disaster of the Bush presidency.

Lest we forget, Nixon & Clinton tried the Executive Privilege bit, & lost. Either way, Bush can't win. The story will be headline material until the Supreme Court decides the issue. And a past Supreme Court ruling states that EP only applies to national security issues. OOPS!

An interesting side note. The part of the Patriot Act which would have applied in this case was repealed by the Senate 98 - 2. There is no doubt the House will pass it. Bush couldn't make a veto stick if he tried. If nothing else, at least that obnoxious p[art of that law is history.

Huh? If Congress passes bills that the president likes, or decides to defer to him on security matters rather than fight for their prerogatives, that's their right.

"Absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets, we find it difficult to accept the argument that even the very important interest in confidentiality of Presidential communications is significantly diminished by production of such material for in camera inspection with all the protection that a district court will be obliged to provide."

But I’m not quite sure if that applies to political appointees. Can the President fire Gonzales for being Hispanic?

I'll bet he can, but firing for obstruction and firing for discrimination intuitively seem different in kind. The former is a crime itself, whereas the illegality of the latter depends on background principles of justice and fairness.

“Executive privilege” is not the most clearly settled body of law in the world.

If memory serves, it was taken as a radical extension of EP when the courts held it covered Cheney. I'm no expert on this (or even close), but from that, it strikes me as unlikely EP will cover staff members.

Unitary congress, here we come!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/20/executive_privilege/index.html

What crime are we talking about here? It’s not illegal for the President to fire US Attorneys. This has obviously been politically mishandled by the President and the White House, but nothing criminal here.

four *possible* crimes accoriding to Adam Cohen at the NYT:

Obstruction of Justice (two different ways, both for the firings and earlier calling some prosecutors to "influence" their actions)
Lying to congress
Witness tampering

Editorial here:

Now that doesn;t mean any crimes *were* created. That's why we have investigations to assess the validity of suspicions. What we have now are very suspicious circumstances.

I wish you had been such a strong advocate of seperation of powers for the 6 years that Bush used congress as a rubber stamp, doing much harm to our country in the process.

We have this little thing called Separation of Powers. Congress simply doesn’t have the right to subpoena presidential advisers. Further, it’s none of Congress’ business what private advice Karl Rove or Harriet Miers gives to the president.

The only person in the executive branch immune to prosecution is the President, which I believe means he is the only one who can ignore a subpoena. There may be a "tradition" of congress not dragging cabinet members into to testify under oath but there was also a tradition of not wiretapping without a warrant, a tradition of not torturing helpless prisoners, a tradition of not exporting secret prisons, a tradition of respecting habeus corpus, a tradition of not politicizing science, and a tradition of not politicizing the US attorneys. After the republicans borke so many I think I'll let the dems slide on breaking one that helps fix all the others.

And it is absolutely Congress business if Rove has committed a crime, as the available evidence suggests is strongly possible (not proven, but suggested). The executive branch cannot police itself, Congress and the Courts however can, that's partly why we have a separation of powers.

Not quite right. The usual phrase is "for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all."

But not for an *illegal* reason. They couldn't fire her for being female. Or to obstruct justice.

But I'm not quite sure if that applies to political appointees. Can the President fire Gonzales for being Hispanic?