Dashiell Hammett and Arlo Guthrie address the treachery and deceit at the Department of Justice

“Don’t worry about the story’s goofiness. A sensible one would’ve had us all in the cooler.” (Sam Spade speaking to Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon.)

These are strange times, Ti-jean. I have checked Roget’s Thesaurus, and it does not appear that “Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General” is generally used as a synonym for “cannon fodder,” but if I worked in the District of Columbia today, I would seriously consider joining a circus or a motorcycle gang. These are more reputable occupations, and they are infinitely safer. Ask any of the eight Federal prosecutors who have been thrown from the train.

In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade knew that Lieutenant Dundy and Tom Polhaus knew he was lying, and he didn’t care. That is clearly the spirit at the Justice Department these days.

Ti-jean, I am not particularly concerned when politicians lie. I expect it, and I would be a fool if I didn’t. “How do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” Aristophanes told that joke backstage in 386 B.C. and got big laughs because everyone knew it was true. Little has changed.

But it is different when the lies are shoved out the door and left naked and shivering in the cold wind on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It is naive to complain that eight Federal prosecutors were fired for “political reasons.” U.S. Attorneys serve “at the pleasure of the President.” Conversely, they can be dismissed “at the pleasure of the President,” for any reason or no reason, and dismissals are not unusual. W. is by no means the first to dismiss prosecutors.

(It is, on the other hand, quite amusing that the Republican Party is using the “Clinton did it too” defense. This is the same party that was so appalled by Bill Clinton that they spent millions of dollars on investigations and failed to get a conviction. Now they’re using his precedent as a defense. We do love irony at Imaginary Grapefruit.)

But it is completely ludicrous that they expect anyone with Alpha wave activity to believe that Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William E. Moschella decided on his own that the manner in which interim prosecutors were appointed was a “constitutional anomaly” and used the Patriot Act to fix the anomaly without any discussion, debate or approval, and that no one noticed before the bill was passed. As I said, lies are to be expected, but we want them to be plausible.

Ti-jean, do you believe that the Attorney General of the United States is not consulted when the law that dictates how Federal prosecutors are appointed is about to be changed?

In 1974, Arlo Guthrie wrote a song called “The Presidential Rag,” which included this question to Richard Nixon: “if you didn’t know about this one, then what else don’t you know?” It's still a fair question.

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