A Libertarian by any other name...

could be known as Andrew Sullivan.

Sorry, but that's the first thing I thought of when I got done reading the following article by Radley Balko in Reason magazine: New Priorities, Not New Prosecutors.

Why would I say this? Well, we all know how St. Andrew of the Perpetually Aggrieved and Gob-Smacked Heart appears to see the world thru a disco ball prism of FMA induced fever dreams.

Libertarians? Pretty much the same. Except their visions are a little smokier and a little hazier, and are accompanied by a pretty severe case of the munchies. Yep, they pretty much see the world through the transparent, green filter of a homemade Mountain Dew bottle bong.

Balko's article, pretty much validates this opinion for me.

More after the jump.

UPDATE: Reason fires back at yours truly, with a little goalpost moving to boot.

Update continued after the jump.

Balko's article uses the occasion of the Bush administration having replaced 7 United States Attorneys to make his argument that it isn't the attorneys that need to be replaced, it is, in fact, the prosecutorial priorities of the Justice Department that need to be changed.

But apparently, he can't make this argument without engaging in a Sullivanesque bit of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Check out the following paragraphs:

Still, while a president may appoint federal prosecutors who share his priorities as previously appointed U.S. attorneys' terms expire, it's rare that a U.S. attorney is dismissed without cause, much less a half dozen or more of them at the same time.

One reason for that may have been that in the past, the president's appointments for the position had to be confirmed by the United States Senate within 120 days. A president still at least had to abide by the pretense that federal prosecutors served the law, not the president. A wholesale dismissal of attorneys appointed by a prior administration would be met with skepticism in the Senate.

But that's not the case anymore. In March 2006, President Bush signed the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. Included in that bill was a provision allowing interim U.S. attorneys appointed by the president to serve indefinitely without Senate confirmation. This means that the prosecutors appointed by President Bush to replace those he just fired will be able to serve out the remainder of his term without being subjected to scrutiny from the Senate.

Ahh...The Patriot Act. The source of all modern governmental evil rears it's ugly head again! Why Bush urged passage of this legislation just so he could appoint a bunch of Elliot Ness wannabes to harass the cultivaters of kind bud.

As ridiculous as this sounds, does Balko not remember 1992? Among President Clinton's first acts in office was to fire/demand the resignation of all 93 US Attorneys. He didn't need the Patriot Act to get away with this either. He simply did it, and the Democratic Senate was not inclined to question this or to stand in his way.

(As a side note, one of the Clinton fired US Attorneys was a man named Jeff Sessions, who you all might recognize as a pretty decent US Senator these days.)

Why is this such a horrendously troubling bit of Bush evildoing, you ask? Fortunately Balko provides us the example of Mary Beth Buchanan to crystallize the "problem" for us:

Perhaps the best example of the Bush administration's law enforcement priorities is Mary Beth Buchanan, formerly the U.S. attorney for the Pittsburgh area. Ms. Buchanan is widely considered a rising star in the Republican party. Her career has been carefully incubated in the Bush Justice Department, both under first Attorney General John Ashcroft, and under Gonzalez.

Buchanan's most famous case as attorney general was "operation pipe dreams," in which some 2,000 law enforcement officers spent $12 million in taxpayer dollars collaborating to arrest 55 people for selling glass-blown bongs over the internet. The trophy in those arrests was actor/comedian Tommy Chong. Despite having no criminal record, Buchanan went after Chong with zeal, because, she said, he had glamorized the use of marijuana in his movies. Chong received the harshest sentence of any of those arrested.

Ahh...she had the audacity to prosecute Tommy Chong. Bummer, man.

Buchanan was also the first U.S. attorney to take up Attorney General Gonzalez's challenge to go after pornographers. She filed precedent-setting charges against the porn producer Extreme Associates, a company that isn't even located in her district. It was the first time the federal government has brought an obscenity case in more than a decade. Her case was later thrown out in federal court.

Horrors....she prosecuted a case in accordance with the priorities set out by her jackbooted, puritanical boss at the Justice Department. Oh wait..Ashcroft had resigned by then. Apparently, the system worked though, as her case was apparently dismissed.

Perhaps Buchanan's most troubling crusade was her pursuit of Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, a Pittsburgh-area pain specialist who she says was writing prescriptions for OxyContin and other drugs in exchange for sex. Since Dr. Rottschaefer's conviction, Buchanan's case has fallen to pieces. Her star witness admitted in letters to her boyfriend that she made up the lurid sex-for-drugs stories in exchange for leniency from Buchanan's office on her own drug charges.

The discovery proceedings in a related civil trial have also since revealed significant problems with the testimony of Buchanan's other four witnesses. Buchanan never relented from her prosecution, and never pursued perjury charges against her star witness.

Well, I don't know what the significant problems were with the other 4 witnesses. But apparently, even if you throw out the "star witnesses" testimony as not being credible at all, there was still sufficient evidence from other sources to find that Dr. Feelgood should be convicted. Since he was, and all.

So what's the real problem? Apparently, the folks who died on September 11 did so to protect the Libertarian ideals of smoking pot, buying porn, and trading drugs for sex. I did not know this. I bet you didn't either.

All of this seems like a lot of taxpayer money wasted on morality-driven cases that do little to make us safer. This warped sense of priorities grows all the more poignant when you consider that Buchanan took office six days before the attacks of Sept., 11, 2001, and that United flight 93 actually crashed to the ground in her district. One would think that might motivate a law enforcement official to devote all of her time and resources to protecting the country from future terrorist attacks. Instead, Buchanan has gone after bong sellers, pornographers, Dr. Rottschaefer, and, if you need another example, a couple of retired veterans who exaggerated their military experience.

You know, I bet if I had access to Lexus/Nexus I could find some examples of cases brought by Ms. Buchanan that didnt involve "bong sellers, pornographers, Dr. Rottschaefer" and the dudes who lied about their military service. But I don't.

But I bet Balko does. Which makes his emphasis on just these cases in Buchanan's record suspect, doesn't it?

I mean...why focus on her record on "operation pipe dreams" unless that's really the only aspect of her record you care about?

One day, Mr. Balko, you may get to experience your Libertarian nirvana devoid of moral judgments imposed upon you by your fellow citizens through their elected officials. A place where you can freely read "Penthouse" in those buildings once known as "churches" while drawing tokes from your spliff as Traffic's "Light Up or Leave Me Alone" plays gently in the background.

Fortunately, today is not that day. And I doubt tomorrow will be either.

UPDATE: The Reason response is pretty lame. Judge it for yourself, though:

"Jack" over at the Ace of Spaces and the commenters over at Lucianne.com take aim at my recent FoxNews.com column because I've never criticized Bill Clinton for firing U.S. attorneys back when he took office in 1993.

Hmm. A few responses to that:

• I didn't write about it at the time because in 1993, I was all of 18 years old. So I didn't have a blog. There wasn't much Internets to speak of. And I didn't write for a magazine. I suppose I could have written about it for my high school newspaper. In fact, for all I know I may have. I was rather anti-Clinton at the time.

• As for why I didn't include it in the article, well, it was't pertinent. Does every criticism of the Bush administration really need to come with a disclaimer denoting whether or not Clinton did it too? In most cases, Clinton probably did do the same thing. So a pox on both their houses.

No, what you did Mr. Balko was more dishonest. You suggest that were it not for the Patriot Act, President Bush could not have replaced these US Attorneys in such a way as to ensure that the prsecutorial priorities of the Justice Department were being met. That simply isn't true, and Clinton's having done so is illustrative of the fact that the Patriot Act is not the bogeyman you seem to believe it is in this case. That is why Clinton's actions should be mentioned. It gives broader context to the precedent his administration set, versus the precedent you argue the Bush administration is setting.

Balko also doesn't like my suggestion that his use of Ms. Buchanan is unfair:

• As for the Ace of Spades' suggestion that I selectively chose just a few Mary Beth Buchanan cases for criticism, here are the press releases put out by Buchanan's office. Judge for yourself if the cases she thinks are worthy of touting to the media are a sound use of federal law enforcement resources.

On this point, I'll let Sobek (an attorney in Nevada who does have access to the legal search services that I lack) rebut this point:

Jack, I'm running a westlaw search on prosecutions by Mary Beth Buchanan, and so far your hunch has proven correct. The vast majority of what I'm finding are immigrations appeals. I've also got criminal prosecutions for carjacking, bank robbery, felon with a firearm, witness tampering, all kinds of good stuff.

I've only got two drug cases. One is actually not really a drug case: it's a prosecution for welfare fraud by a guy working at a methadone clinic. The other is possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute.

As I said, I'm still working through the list (I got 98 hits), but so far I'm not seeing anything to support Balko's argument. You hit the nail on the head with the Tommy Chong thing.

Thanks for looking that up, Sobek.

posted by Jack M. at 12:42 PM

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