During an appearance at Troy University’s School of Journalism on Thursday, March 15, 2007, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor Karl Rove said the removal of prosecutors was based entirely on policy and personnel matters at the Justice Department.

Rove claimed the dismissals were no different than ones in the Clinton Administration, and he questioned why the Bush Administration's action is drawing "super-heated rhetoric" while the dismissals during President Clinton's terms did not.

"In each of these instances a decision was made at the Department of Justice on the basis of policy and personnel," Rove told students at a journalism seminar.

"We're at a point where people want to play politics with it. That's fine," he said. "I'd simply ask everybody who's playing politics with this be asked to comment about the removal of 123 U.S. attorneys during the previous administration and see if they had the same super-heated political rhetoric."

The 123 included 93 Republican appointees that the Democrat Clinton replaced when he began his first term, which is common in such a change of command. Rove refused to elaborate on any details on who the other 30 were.

By comparison, he said, "We've replaced a total of 128."

The argument by the President’s political guru is misleading at best, a blatant lie at worse.

Mr. Rove would have people believe that if the president wants to weed out those who have been less than satisfactory by whatever subjective standard the president or his staff may wish to apply, then there is no reason that he cannot take away what he has given.

Yes, while the power to appoint U.S. Attorneys is one of executive privilege, manipulation as if they were pieces in a game of political chess as numerous emails and speeches given by Mr. Rove in the run up to the 2006 elections demonstrate barely meets the his own standard of plausible deniability.

So just how does Rove’s view of reality put forth by the Bush Administration match that of previous administrations? Business as usual? Or a complete break from past practice and an unprecedented move?

That question appears to be largely resolved by a Congressional Research Service report.

CRS examined the tenure of all U.S. Attorneys who were confirmed by the Senates between the years 1981 and 2006 to determine how many had served—and of those how many had been forced to resign for reasons other than a change in administration.

The answer; of the 468 confirmations made by the Senate over the 25-year period, only 10 left office involuntarily for reasons other than a change in administration prior to the firings that took place in December, according to the available evidence gathered by CRS. The average incidence of such involuntary departures was one out of every two-and-a-half years; the largest number of such departures prior to this administration was a total of four departures during the Clinton administration.

But the December firings by the Bush Administration stand in even more stark contrast with the firings that took place in previous administrations when the grounds for the departures are examined. In virtually all instances prior to the December firings, including two previous departures during this administration, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue.

It is no surprise that Karl Rove’s black hand has once again put him squarely on the wrong side of political history where he seems to have set up permanent residence every election cycle lording over a factless domain, torturing numbers until they say what he wants them to.

But this time principal may have prevailed over political gain.

It is clear that the four administrations in control the executive branch of government during the past quarter-century, only the current administration has held the view that U.S. Attorney can or should be removed absent serious cause. In no instance is there any indication of a removal because a U.S. attorney failed to meet certain political criteria, such as prosecuting cases that were considered too sensitive to partisan issues or failing to prosecute cases that would be helpful from a partisan perspective.

And if there are those in need of further convincing, consider the following email dated January 9, 2005 by the recently departed Kyle Sampson, who seemed to understand the political price that would be paid if Mr. Rove’s unprecedented plan was implemented, but took the bullet for him anyway: "Due to the history, it would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only. ...That said, if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."