This past week I wrote about the eight U.S. attorneys who have been summarily fired since December: David Iglesias, Kevin Ryan, Bud Cummins, Margaret Chiara, Paul Charlton, Carol Lam, Daniel Bodgen and John McKay, and recommended that Congress subpoena them.

There are so many lies and ugly aspects to this, that it's hard to know where to begin. But let me cut to the bottom line that everybody is missing: Thanks to the inaptly-named "Patriot Act," Attorney General Gonzales has the authority to name replacements who can serve indefinitely without confirmation. Under the previous law, unconfirmed replacements could serve for only 120 days, after which the district couts would name a successor. The innocent explanation from Bush et al. is that the old law was an incursion of judicial authority into Executive Branch appointments. But the real reason for the change is that the Patriot Act lets them do an end-run around Senate confirmation, just as it lets them do an end-run around many significant parts of the Constitution.

The Justice Departments initially claimed that the Administration has never removed a U.S. Attorney in retaliation or for political reasons, and that the firings were based on the prosecutors' "performance-related problems." In January, Attorney General Gonzales said he "would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons." Justice Department spokesperson Brian Roehrkasse said about the recent mass firings, "The administration has never removed a U.S. attorney in an effort to retaliate." But now, in a total about-face, White House and Justice Department officials are acknowledging that they canned the prosecutors primarily because they were not doing enough to carry out President Bush's policies on immigration, firearms, the death penalty, and other issues.

Granted, U.S. Attorneys are nominated by the President and serve at his pleasure, and the President is entitled to have prosecutors who reflect his law enforcement priorities. But rarely has one been replaced in the middle of an Administration's term, and it is unheard of for so many to be fired in one fell swoop and in such a highhanded way.

This is just the icing on the cake of the other ugly aspects of this story. At least five of the fired U.S. attorneys were presiding over major public-corruption probes targeting Republican politicians or their supporters. They are predominantly from blue statesin the West and Southwest. And at least one was specifically ousted to make room for J. Timothy Griffin, a former White House aide to Karl Rove, which even Griffen declined when he realized what a scandal this was becoming.

Iglesias, the departing U.S. attorney in New Mexico for the past 5 years, spoke out this week about how two members of Congress tried to pressure him to accelerate a probe--stemming from allegations involving construction contracts and a prominent Democratic former state senator--just before the November elections. This was significant because it was the first time that one of the fired eight has so clearly articulated that political pressure regarding an ongoing criminal investigation played a part in his dismissal.

It turns out that the Congresspeople who pressured Iglesias were none other than Republicans Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson. (Wilson herself was in a close reelection battle with then-state Attroney General Patricia Madrid, which she barely won.)

Representative Wilson and Senator Domenici have violated House and Senate ethics rules that restrict such ex parte communications during ongoing criminal investigations. Interfering in any way with an ongoing federal criminal investigation -- whether to accelerate it or to shut it down -- is obstruction of justice.

On Tuesday, Congress will hear from four of the eight ousted U.S. Attorneys. But Congress should also demand to hear from the Justice Department, which came up with the hit list, and the White House, which approved the firings because it believed the ousted eight were not doing enough to carry out Bush policies--not because of, as the Bushies originally asserted, poor performance.