U.S. Attorney Firings

I am sorry, I just don't get this "scandal" that seems to have captivated the media and Washington's attention. James Joyner has the best summary I have seen:

So, here’s my understanding of the scandal:

• The president expresses displeasure that some of his political appointees are not doing their job.
• His White House Counsel suggests firing everybody, whether they’re doing their job or not.
• 
  His senior strategist says not to do that.
• Staffers go through the records and identify the 7 of 93 prosecutors (7.53%) who aren’t prosecuting a whole category of violations of federal law.
• The Attorney General fires those 7 political appointees.

Am I missing something here?

I don't think so. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees. They serve, in essence, at the pleasure of the President. Was the President within his rights to fire or order Attorney General Gonzalez to fire all 93? Yes--that is the definition of political appointee. Would it have made sense? Absolutely not, but it is within the President's prerogative to fire U.S. Attorneys.

But I am missing something it seems? The Democrats and the media seem apopolectic at the idea of firing people for not doing the job the President hired them to do. If this has been a Democratic president firing U.S. Attorneys, would we be hearing the same outrage?

The problem, these U.S. Attorneys were not prosecuting voter fraud cases, a favorite target of the GOP side of the voting rights issue. Democrats generally believe, with some justification, that voter fraud is a small class of crimes with few cases. While that may be true, that doesn't exempt the U.S. Attorney from not prosecuting the cases. If you don't do your job, you should be fired, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, whether you are a U.S. attorney or some one working at McDonald's flipping burgers. You are hired to do a job and if you don't do it, your boss is within his/her rights to fire you.