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During the dispute over the Bush firing of U.S. attorneys, including Nevada's David Bogden, there has been a lot of unreliable information, particularly in the blogosphere. This is an effort to sort some of it out.

The president appoints the U.S. attorneys and can fire them at will.

While this is true in a civics-book sense, U.S. senators have more of a stake in the process than is generally known. While the president technically appoints all U.S. attorneys, he CHOOSES very few of them. That's because the senators use their confirmation power to force presidents to surrender the right to choose their own appointees. As a result, senators are often heavily invested in the incumbency of U.S. attorneys, something that has gotten little attention during the current dispute. Nevada's David Bogden was chosen by U.S. Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, to replace Howard Zlotnick. Zlotnick served for a few months after Bush became president and replaced Clinton appointee Kathryn Landreth. Zlotnick was chosen by Ensign, Landreth by Sen. Harry Reid.

Democrats are persecuting Bush for the same thing Clinton did.

Clinton did indeed appoint all new U.S. attorneys when he became president. But he did it at the beginning of his administration in order to have his own team. So did Ronald Reagan in 1981. The second Bush replaced all Clinton U.S. attorneys, though not in one fell swoop-- "We fired all Clinton USAs but staggered it out more and permitted some to stay on a few months," according to a memo by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff. It is normal protocol for presidential appointees to submit their resignations when a new president takes office.

In the current case, however, Bush has fired eight SELECTED attorneys midway through his second term. This is highly unusual behavior, which raises legitimate issues of why those specific officials were targeted, particularly since at least half - including Nevada's Bogden - and possibly more were known to have politically sensitive cases in front of them.

Bush is being raked over the coals in a way no Democrat would be.

When Jimmy Carter, in his first year in office, fired just one U.S. attorney -- David Marston of Pennsylvania -- Republicans and journalists nearly burned the White House to the ground. It eventually came out that Carter removed Marston, who was investigating Democratic U.S. representatives Joshua Eilberg and Daniel Flood, at Eilberg's request. It was a major national controversy for more than a year. At one point, Time magazine published a story listing four lies Carter told about the case.

News coverage of some firings assigns specific Bush administration reasons to firings.

Interviews and administration e-mail traffic suggest that the reasons for the firings are far from clear. In the case of Bogden, for instance, the evidence suggests a Bush administration search for a pretext for his firing. The reasons du jour given in Justice Department e-mail traffic and those Bogden says he was given included:

1. Providing slots for other attorneys to get experience for future judgeships

2. Bodgen's alleged reluctance to prosecute a weak obscenity case when his workforce was reduced

3. Las Vegas district "under-served" in terrorism, violent crime, drugs and organized crime cases

4. Lack of rigor in prosecuting voter fraud cases

5. "Lack of energy and leadership for highly visible district with serious crime issues"

In fact, crime figures for Nevada are down, not up.

Democrats reformed the process by changing the law.

What the Democrats are now calling "reform" is what they torpedoed six years ago. The process Democrats created in response to the Bush firings is the same process they put an end to when they helped passed the Patriot Act in the post-September 11 hysteria on Oct. 25, 2001. Every Democrat but one in the Senate voted for the measure, which allowed U.S. attorneys who had not been approved by the Senate to serve indefinitely. If that provision was, as the Democrats contend, a cause of the present dispute, there is blame enough for both parties.