Schwarz switches for Schauer

The AP is reporting that Former Congressman Joe Schwarz has decided to endorse Democratic State Senator Mark Schauer over Republican Tim Walberg who defeated Schwarz for the 7th Congressional seat 2 years ago in the GOP primary.

Schwarz told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he decided to endorse Schauer over Republican Rep. Tim Walberg because the anti-tax Club for Growth began running ads critical of Schauer.

The Club for Growth injected more than $1 million into the 2006 primary, helping Walberg defeat Schwarz, then a first-term congressman.

(snip)

Schwarz says he couldn't remain neutral in the race once the group got involved. He says it's "the straw that broke the camel's back."

Dueling partisan polling shows leads for both candidates while external polling has shown Schauer closing the distance in what has generally been considered a strong pick-up opportunity for Democrats looking to increase their majority in the U.S. Congress.

A debate between Schauer and Walberg is set for October 7.

The fingerprints of Vern Ehlers?

Ever since the scandal broke regarding the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys and the fact was revealed that one of those eight was Margaret Chiara, the U.S. Attorney for the Grand Rapids district for the last five years. I've been wondering what her role was in all of this. There hasn't been a lot of chatter regarding why she was fired and Chiara was, on the surface, someone you'd think the Bush team would have had no problem keeping in her post. From the Kalamazoo Gazette:

Chiara was appointed to the post by President George W. Bush in 2001, filling the role as the government's chief law enforcer for the Western District of Michigan, which spans 49 counties, from the Indiana border to the Upper Peninsula. The former policy director at the Michigan Supreme Court, Chiara has led a varied career that had her studying to be a Catholic nun, a teacher on two continents and then a private practice attorney and county prosecutor in Cass County.

So, given that Bush appointed her, she had a solid resume and she had even studied to be a nun, I think it's safe to say we certainly know that Chiara wasn't exactly a liberal extremist. She also seems to have been damn good as a U.S. Attorney. More from the Gazette:

U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell:

"I was shocked to learn that her resignation had been requested. She's clearly part of a larger pattern.''

In previous Justice Department firings, officials cited poor performance among the U.S. attorneys. However, most had positive job reviews and had run into political trouble over such issues as the death penalty and immigration, according to a recent Washington Post report.

Bell said Chiara is one of the best U.S. attorneys he has observed during 20 years on the federal bench. He said Chiara did nothing that should have prompted her firing.

Typically, most Republican stalwarts have followed the AM right wing radio command that this is nothing but a Democratic Party witch hunt. As usual it gets chalked up to "criminalizing politics" which is really a nice cover for widescale corruption and a political patronage system that rivals anything cooked up by the mafia. We can always expect the Republican Party to entrench in a scandal and protect its own even when felonies have obviously been committed. G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North can be forgiven for jeopardizing the sanctity of our democracy (when Liddy and others broke in to Democratic Party headquarters on behalf of President Richard Nixon) or even our national security (when North was a player in giving U.S. arms to IRAN, cutting deals with the terrorist organization Hezbollah and illegally funding right wing militias in Nicaragua).

However, even some prominent Republicans have slowly been peeling away from the party line spin and have called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to step down for his role in the firings and his impotent and mangled response when the story broke which included lying the Congress. Gonzalez is expected to testify next week and the talk has been that many expect Gonzalez to quit before then (since he's liable to only make things worse by lying under oath yet again). Just today U.S. Congressman Vern Ehlers (R-Grand Rapids) has called for the Attorney General to resign:

Republican Congressman Vern Ehlers of Grand Rapids says he thinks U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should step down.

[snip]

Gonzales is under fire from the Democratically-controlled Congress for the recent firing of eight U.S. attorneys, including one from West Michigan.

Ehlers won't comment on the merits of the firings but says he disapproves of the way Gonzales carried them out.

Ehlers is quoted here:

"Since he's such a close, personal friend, he's hurt the President by what he's doing, he should have the politeness to offer his resignation. I don't know if he has or not and the President is still holding it, who knows. But I think he's damaged himself and the President through his actions."

So, either Ehlers knows how much this scandal is eroding whatever scant support his party now holds or he knows something else.

I'm guessing the Republicans in Grand Rapids--like Ehlers--have a much better idea than we do what the politics were behind Chiara's firing.

But it's also worth mentioning that, at least according to Rove's PowerPoint presentation, Vern Ehlers is thinking of retiring in 08. Not something that was generally known here in MI. But there you have it. Retiring GOP Rep getting fed up with the GOP shenanigans?

Or is it that Vern knows his fingerprints are all over Chiara's firing? Chances are decent that Ehlers was doing some leg work on behalf of Pete Secchia or some other West Michigan Mafioso player and made some calls to quash an investigation, which is the underlying reason in every case of a fired U.S. Attorney so far. We already know Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson were guilty of the same thing. Chiara's been one of the last remaining mysteries but given Ehler's recent willingness to throw his party's Attorney General overboard, I think we should be asking ourselves why such a consistent party line Republican has found to will to buck the system. Is it because he's finding independence in his pending retirement, is he merely playing to the hometown crowd and backing a fellow Grand Rapids Republican to win some votes for his next run or is trying to stop an investigation before it finds his fingerprints on the knife in Margaret Chiara's back?

The irony would be, that if this turns out to be true, that Ehlers was just named to chair the U.S. House Administration Committee, a nondescript name for something which used to be called the House Oversight Committee which tried to make sure that ethics violations committed by members of Congress were dealt with, something the Republicans in the Congress haven't wanted to do given that Ehlers was named to the position when the current chair, Republican Bob Ney of Ohio, was the third Republican to step down for taking bribes in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Surely, Ehlers is smart enough to know that whether or not he does plan on retiring, any whiff of scandal could put this seat in play for the Democrats and that perhaps the best thing to do is to try to throw the Attorney General overboard and hope that ends the willingness of the media to dig any deeper into this. I think somebody needs to do some digging and I also think it's time to dust for fingerprints...