Remember how Republicans were furious when the staff of the White House Travel Office was fired, even though they served at the pleasure of the president who had every right to fire them? Remember how the GOP made a huge issue out of it, sicced Kenneth Starr on it, and even tied it in with the whole Vince Foster suicide and claimed that there was a massive conspiracy where Hillary Clinton shot Foster and… well, you remember.

Well, Republicans aren’t so interested in investigating firings now. Especially since the firings were not low-level flunkies in some travel office, but instead were seven highly-regarded U.S. Attorneys. Especially since the firings were not travel office personnel charged with embezzlement, but instead were serious investigators who were looking into political corruption. Especially since those said attorneys were doing things that Republicans didn’t like.

Among the seven fired attorneys were Carol Lam, the California prosecutor who had brought down Duke Cunningham, and who was investigating other corrupt Republican politicians, and David Iglesias, who was investigating a Democrat in New Mexico–but had defied pressure to change his timetable so the investigation could become an election-year scandal.

People were already suspicious about the firings, as they were attributed to “performance-related” issues, even though the attorneys in question had been doing their jobs very well. Adding to the suspicion was the fact that the Bush administration was replacing the fired attorneys with political flunkies, most notably when Arkansas attorney Bud Cummings was fired so that a Karl Rove flunky could take his place. [Update: though suggested in irony, the idea that the Rove flunky got assigned to Arkansas just in time to wield subpoena power in order to dig up dirt on Hillary is not such an outrageous one….]

Making the stench worse was the Bush administration using a terror-related power given them in the “Patriot” Act which allowed them to make indefinite appointments to these offices without review.

Iglesias even goes so far as to say that he was told directly by the Justice Department that the firings were so that Bush appointees could take their places, not because they weren’t doing their jobs well.

Well, of course you can’t expect Republicans to go for an investigation of Republicans, any more than you could expect Democrats to go along with an investigation of Democrats (what the hell are they thinking with appointing Jefferson to a committee, anyway?).

However, the firing of U.S. Attorneys who were investigating Republicans or refusing to politicize the investigation of Democrats is clearly more than just a little political scandal; it is obstruction of justice at the very least.

Last year, nothing would have come of this. Now, the Democrats have the gavel, and they’re going to use it.

About damn time.