Talk:Dismissed U.S. attorneys summary

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Attorneys dismissed during 2006-2005

Great work on this page!

I understand that perhaps the simplest NPOV stance is to include all the "other" attorneys under one banner, but I do think there is a significant amount of independant evidence linking the two fired in 2006 (Cummins & Graves) to the same DOJ firing process as the other seven attorneys, while there is little evidence that I am aware of for the attorneys fired in 2005 (Warner and Dibiaggio) being part of that process (other than their own speculation.) I don't know how you fairly decide which attorneys are at the "core" of the controversy, and which are questionable, but based on the evidence we've seen, I think it would be preferable to group all of the 2006 attorneys together, with a separate section for the 2005 attorneys. Just my 2 cents. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 05:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I have made changes in line with the above comment, as there were no objections. My point is that the two "other" 2006 attorneys (Cummins and Graves) have been much more significant figures in the controversy to date than the 2005 attorneys. I did my best to reference this fact by showing how few articles have been written in major papers about the 2005 attorneys, in comparison to the 2006 ones (Todd Graves has a low Lexis article count for now, but his numbers will certainly rise when he testifies in front of the senate next week). I hope this isn't felt to run afoul of no original research, but I'm not sure how else to demonstrate a lack of coverage / media interest. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 04:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

That works just fine for me. Thanks. -- Yellowdesk 05:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The new organization works for me as well. I would add two additional points. The first is that there does not seem to be evidence that before 2005 that any USAs were ever forced out, other than for misconduct. So if two were forced out in 2005, that is still rather unusual, seems to me. One can perhaps look at the earliest reference to admin. planning to bypass congress or replace USAs and compare that to the timing of the 2005 dismissals. Of course, there may have been others in prior administrations who "resigned", but really were forced out - but we wouldn't know about it. Not sure just how unusual forced dismissals are. The second point is that there are now those in the gray area - e.g., Heffelfinger. Did he really resign or was he forced out? (he insists the former) These USAs are party loyalists and can act to protect the administration. Even if he resigned, as others may have, he is still part of this story now. Should we separate those that were fired from those who happened to resign? Perhaps the Heffelfinger discussion can go in the Main Issues page for now under "other related controversies". Or perhaps the article here should have a new section on related resignations, together with brief discussions on how they came to be part of the controversy? Bdushaw 18:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)