President Obama would have fired Catherine Hanaway and replaced her with Bob “Truth Squader” McCulloch, but the Truth Squader didn’t want the job.
If you are a regular to this medium, you know my opinion of Catherine Hanway’s tenure as U.S. Attorney for Eastern Missouri. I think she deliberately avoided controversial (i.e. racial) issues, and harped on safe issues that 99.99999999% of people agree with, in order not to offend Democrat constituencies in the futile hope that a Democrat President wouldn’t replace her, and that it would all be in vain.
But I’m even less impressed with Bob McCulloch. If you remember, at one point last summer, he and Jennifer Joyce plus Metherson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer came out and made the implication that they were going to prosecute anyone who uttered untruthful words about The Messiah. The purpose was to intimidate Obama critics. In another medium, I and others made the point that their doing so violated Federal Civil Rights laws, the 1st Amendment and common sense. Through the advice of a Miami area free speech attorney, I found out that the Federal prosecutor for this area (ironically, Hanaway) could have used a Federal statute called the Klan Act either in civil or criminal fashion, to sue or prosecute McCulloch, Joyce and Boyer for conspiring to intimidate people from using their civil liberties. From others, I learned that Times v. Sullivan and Garrison v Louisiana precluded their actions in terms of Supreme Court precedent. Hanaway didn’t, even though her office knew of these legal avenues, because she read the tea leaves and saw Obama’s victory a’comin.
While this dismissal couldn’t have happened to a nicer gal, I’m just as glad that it’s not going to be McCulloch taking her place. I kinda figured that McCulloch or Joyce were angling to be the U.S. Attorney, hence their attempt to suck up. Why McCulloch didn’t want the job is beyond me.
BTW, I read some Obamaites on the comment section of this KSDK article rationalizing President Obama’s attempt (which will eventually succeed) in firing Hanaway, claiming that Obama’s actions aren’t “political” like President Bush’s firing of many U.S. Attorneys. A politician does something political? Whodathunk? Also, U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President; any genuflection about politics is irrelevant.
