thats easy.. 2 reasons… cant think on your feet and you cant copy enough evidence and take it with you in either conditional state…

such a mans findings would not be on a napkin. so it stops destruction of stuff, but also the ability to think of what to do. he might have been stupid enough to panic and copy something, or walk out with something and then they would have somthing ligitimate on him. the fact they did that to him then could be buried in the scandal.

also… i will bet that when your thrown out there is a limit on what you can talk about that when your in office and acting you have more choice to.

and maybe last… you look better mounting a defense from the office and job you have than on the street. so by putting him on the street, the fight becomes the man against the presidency, not the office of the acting IG.

there may be other reasons… none may apply…

What’s more, the allegation of Walpin’s being confused and disoriented is absurd on the face of it. Clearly, he is not. And if on a certain day he seemed that way, obviously a person is not terminated for that—the proper avenue is to determine if he is ill and if it’s a temporary thing or if it really is a more chronic problem. Obviously the administration was looking for an excuse (or making one up) to fire him.

The bottom line: Obama did not comply with some very important protections and regulations built into a law that he himself had sponsored when a Senator. And that is the main reason the firing is suspicious, in addition to the fact that the White House’s subsequent excuses are inconsistent and some seem incorrect.

This sort of thing should raise suspicions in all Americans, Right or Left, and make them want to know more. The newspapers should be all over this—not to conclude there has been wrongdoing on the part of Obama, but to require more information because of the strong appearance of impropriety. The fact that Obama supporters don’t care about this or excuse it, and that most of the press doesn’t either, is another example of partisanship gone mad.

Then he wrote: http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/17/the-walpin-firing/#comment-112927

First time Tim wrote, “breached Justice Department protocol by publicly announcing that Johnson may be guilty of a crime”

Second time Tim wrote, “it is not appropriate for the Inspector General, responsible for investigating potential fraud, to suggest that Johnson is guilty of committing a crime”

Time outs a liberal.

I hear they get paid for that…..

None of what you have said explains why Walpin was given an hour’s notice to quit, or be fired. Nor does any of what you’ve said explain why, instead of being accused of procedural improprieties, or partisan bias adversely affecting his performance, he was fired — so says the Obama White House — for being confused and disoriented, for telecommuting too much, and so forth. Nor have you addressed the irony of President Obama, by all appearances, making an end-run around a law he himself co-sponsored last year!

What you have said is that Walpin may have breached protocol, by accusing someone publicly of a crime before going through channels, and that he is outspokenly partisan. You have not explained why this provides adequate grounds for his summary dismissal, in apparent defiance of the Inspectors General Reform Act. You also accused Walpin of trying to influence the outcome of an election — but you have not explained why, if this is the case, the Obama Administration did not press charges against him in January.

More to the point: as Neo keeps pointing out, the appearance of impropriety is very important in politics, and President Obama ran on a campaign of putting an end to “politics as usual”. This looks exactly like machine politics being its usual nasty self.

I don’t know if President Obama will pay a political price for all this; he’s weathered worse accusations than this. I do know, however, that there are millions of Americans who voted for Obama precisely because they thought he was above dirty politics. They will not be happy to hear an Obama White House say, in effect, “Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?”

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

In short, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Walpin overstepped his authority in going after Johnson. And his background hardly suggests that he’s the kind of politically independent, non-partisan watchdog the IQ job requires. He’s a member of the conservative Federalist society, and once introduced Mitt Romney at a meeting of the group by saying that Romney’s state, Massachusetts, is run by “modern-day KKK … the Kennedy-Kerry Klan.”

This isn’t like the firing of US Attorneys. In those cases, the evidence suggests that at least some were fired for their unwillingness to do the partisan bidding of the White House. Here, by contrast, Walpin himself appears to have acted in a partisan, or at least an irresponsible, manner in his pursuit of Johnson. The evidence that Walpin performed poorly dwarfs the evidence that any of the fired US Attorneys did.

Legally, too, the situation is different. Yes, US Attorneys serve, like the CNCS IG, at the pleasure of the president. But because the threat of a politicized system of justice is so grave, there are specific laws and protocol governing when — aside from at the start of his term — a president can remove a US Attorney. That’s simply not the case to the same extent when it comes to agency IGs. As McCaskill pointed out, the law requires the president to notify Congress about why he’s removing one — and now he has done so — but it doesn’t significantly constrain his ability to fire an IG.

It’ll be up to Congress to decide whether the White House’s explanation is detailed enough. We’ve got a call in to McCaskill’s office to ask whether she’s satisfied with what the White House has put out, and we’ll keep you posted…”

Another right-wing epic fail…

So, a Rabbi, a Priest, and Ted Kennedy walk into a granola bar in Vermont…