My God. They didn't just revoke Bush's power to appoint US Attorneys without going through the Senate, they revoked it with a 94-2 vote. That's unheard of, short of voting on mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet. The GOP, the party that never met a filibuster it didn't like, is freaking.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.(Hat tip, ThinkProgress.)
....the Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists....
Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
