The New York Times reports on new documents showing that Bush White House political honcho Karl Rove was much more deeply involved in the early moves that led to the firings of numerous United States Attorneys, seemingly for partisan reasons. But the article fails to focus on what matters most: Why?
Internal e-mail messages in the spring of 2005 at the White House showed that there was widespread unhappiness with David Iglesias, the United States attorney in New Mexico, because of the perception among top Republicans that he was dragging his feet on voter fraud and corruption investigations involving Democrats.
In a June 2005 message, Scott Jennings, a top political aide to Mr. Rove, wrote a colleague that Mr. Iglesias should be removed because Republicans in New Mexico “are really angry over his lack of action on voter fraud stuff.”
Unfortunately, the article does not delve into whether there was indeed voter fraud, or whether, as is so often the case, “voter fraud” was a euphemism for the harassment of minority voters. If so, then the basis for going after Iglesias would not have been his inaction on actual fraud, but his unwillingness to suppress voting by those most inclined to vote Democratic.
