Who Writes This Stuff? More Myth-Jacking in the "Elite" Media

New Mexico Delusions
By Scott Horton
Originally published January 12, 2009 in No Comment on Harpers.org

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page lectures us that the U.S. attorney’s scandal and the allegations about politicization of the Justice Department are all a bunch of “hoohah.” Their proof? A new, court-appointed career federal prosecutor in New Mexico is now in the middle of a “pay to play” investigation, examining allegations that Governor Bill Richardson’s administration gave an important state contract to a California-based investment bank that made contributions to some Richardson-connected PACs.

Perhaps you don’t see how the facts reported support the proposition that the claims of politics in Justice Department prosecutions are false? Neither do I. Neither does anyone I know who read and puzzled over this editorial. The reasoning is apparently something like this: there is corruption in New Mexico state government. President Bush was right to fire David Iglesias, a Republican, for failing to go after it. But this demonstrates a failure to appreciate even the most basic facts surrounding the scandal. . . .

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Reading the Journal’s editorial, you get the distinct feeling that its author doesn’t read the news reports in his own paper, or any newspaper, for that matter. Did the author miss the extended reports on the Department of Justice’s own internal probe–which produced a 400-page report validating Iglesias’s account, noting only that it could not bring the matter to closure only because key figures in the White House refused to cooperate with the probe? The internal report recommended appointment of a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the matter. And Michael B. Mukasey, who makes plain his distaste for special prosecutors, agreed that in this case the need was inescapable: he appointed Nora Dannehy and gave her power to bring criminal charges if she found evidence to back them. Why is the Journal editorial page so troubled by this? Perhaps because special prosecutor Dannehy is now widely thought to be targeting one of their regular contributors, Karl Rove. Moreover, the Journal editors apparently also missed Attorney General Mukasey’s farewell speech, in which he openly acknowledged that there had been “politically influenced functioning” at the Department and expressed his confidence in the Department’s ability to overcome this. So does the New Mexico investigation tell us that the charges of politicization in the Department of Justice are a mirage? Hardly. It does show that a newspaper editor in New York can whip up a mirage in the pages of his paper if he wants to.