I’ve been following the unfortunate career of Harry Reid since he joined the U.S. Senate in 1986.  His latest pronouncement, concerning the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, is one more example that he will do and say whatever he can get away with, to earn himself either political capital, or capital gains in a land deal.

        Is that too harsh a judgment of a man who is now the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate?  Judge for yourself.

        Here’s what Harry Reid said on television, in front of God and everybody, about the decision of the Bush administration to terminate eight (less than 10% of all the U.S. Attorneys): He called on Attorney General Gonzales to resign “in order to restore the Justice Department’s credibility on both sides of the aisle.”  He also described the actions as one of the most “shocking abuses of power” that he had ever seen.

        Apparently the senator from Searchlight, Nevada, was previously blind, since President Clinton in 1993, and President Reagan in 1981, both fired all of the currently serving U.S. Attorneys, or about 90 of them, in one fell swoop.  Senator Reid was not around to comment on the Reagan mass removal of U.S. Attorneys in 1981.  But he was in the Senate in 1993 for the Clinton purge.

        And what did Harry Reid, a Democrat, say about that?  Not a discouraging word was heard, to quote a famous Western song.  And did he demand the resignation of Attorney General Janet Reno, a Democrat, at that time?  Not on your tintype.

        Let’s get some particulars on the table.  All U.S. Attorneys are appointed by the president.  And today, all of them serve at the “pleasure of the president” after they have completed their initial four years after confirmation by the Senate.  Harry Reid is not a stupid man.  He knows that any president, at any time, has the power to remove eight (or more) U.S. Attorneys without stating a reason for those removals.
 
         So, what really has Senator Reid’s knickers in a knot on this subject?  There are two reasons, one personal/political and the other party/political.  The personal side is that one of the attorneys dismissed was a protege of Reid.  The political side is that the eight dismissed attorneys were apparently slack in pursuing cases of election fraud.  The largest single source of election fraud cases is a national organization called ACORN.  It’s full name is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
 
         In the last presidential election ACORN registered about 1 million new “voters.”  Since then, its employees and representatives have pleaded guilty or been found guilty in dozens of cases of fraud, including providing heroin as compensation for the filing of fraudulent registrations.  And most of the new “voters” discovered by ACORN are in a group that votes 90% for Democrats.
 
         So, a win-at-any-cost Democrat, which I believe Harry Reid to be, would not be eager for U.S. Attorneys to investigate fraud in federal elections.  As for why I place Senator Reid in that category, it goes back to his first election.
 
         I had spent 25 years traveling around the country as an expert witness on behalf of ALEC (a membership organization of state legislators) on behalf of the proposed Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The form of the proposed Amendment that ALEC supported was the one drafted by Dr. Milton Friedman.