attorneygate

Back in January, I wrote about the developing U.S. Attorney scandal. Now we're starting to see more details, such a story in the LA Times that says this:

On Tuesday, Iglesias, 49, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that two prominent Republican politicians had called him to ask whether indictments would be filed before the November election against Democratic politicians in an ongoing criminal investigation. In the weeks that followed, Iglesias and seven other federal prosecutors were forced to resign.
. . .
. . . He earned the ire of the state GOP by refusing to prosecute anyone for voter fraud after the 2004 elections, despite some Republicans' contention that 15-year-olds voted. Iglesias said he could find no federal crimes.

The story notes that the second call was from Senator Pete Domenici.

As far as I know, one of the functions of a federal prosecutor is to not bring charges where the prosecutor can't find a crime: the prosecutor has an ethical duty to seek justice. If Congress wants to hold hearings, that's a different matter. As a deliberative body, Congress is set up to perform those sorts of investigations.

Something about this whole situation just feels wrong. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is just yet, but something is rotten in the state of Denmark.