In case you had not heard

There is a new scandal over US attorney firings... Get the rundown here.

News of the U.S. attorney firings first surfaced back in January. It garnered attention almost entirely because one of the firees was San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam. Best known for her successful investigation of disgraced former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.), Lam’s investigation had continued into the heart of the CIA and deep into the congressional appropriations process. Lam’s dismissal raised immediate red flags. Dan Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego field office, went so far as to tell the San Diego Union-Tribune, “I guarantee politics is involved.”

Within a week it emerged that as many as a half-dozen other U.S. attorneys had been forced out under similarly unexplained circumstances at roughly the same time. That was enough to get Bush administration critics asking questions. But the story might well have languished there, in the netherworld of Bush White House quasi-scandals, had it not been for questions asked of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty at a Senate hearing early last month.

The eight fired U.S. attorneys seemed inclined to go quietly until McNulty told the Senate that they’d been let go for “performance-related” problems. A review of the attorneys’ performance evaluations quickly cast doubt on that explanation. And it was also enough to get the fired attorneys talking.