Why can't Dems do this?

Wow. An actual piece of journalism, in which the WaPo's Dan Eggan draws in background info and compares Whitehouse cant with self-contradictory statements they have been making!

A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.

Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years -- prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer's office "a mess."

My first thought when I read the opener was, "But that's just what they accused Iglesias of doing...". Ignominiously, of course, since he was "absent for weeks at a time" because of his role in the NATIONAL GUARD.

(More...)

I was prepared for the admin's statements to go unchallenged as always, but Eggan lays it all out, Boom-boom-boom:

"Having U.S. attorneys serve at the department ensures that a local perspective is brought to policy-making decisions," Roehrkasse said in a statement. ". . . U.S. Attorneys assigned to the Department's headquarters also gain a national perspective and can bring this perspective and national focus to their districts."

But [Dennis Boyd, executive director of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys,] said the prolonged absence of a chief prosecutor can lead to a lack of direction and leadership in U.S. attorneys' offices. The Justice Department made a similar argument in defending the firing of Iglesias, alleging that he had entrusted too much responsibility to his first assistant.

"Quite frankly, U.S. attorneys are hired to run the office, not their first assistants," William E. Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, told the House Judiciary Committee last month.

Iglesias filed a complaint with federal investigators last week, alleging that his dismissal amounted to discrimination based on his status as an officer in the Navy Reserve, which took him away from the job for 40 to 45 days a year. Alleged absenteeism has been the Justice Department's main public criticism of Iglesias, although officials have more recently added concerns about his handling of voter fraud and immigration cases to their arguments about him.

Read the whole piece... it's apparent that something different is starting to happen.

Why? I hate to say it, but... there isn't a Democrat quoted in the story. The good news is, we've got Republicans like Boyd making the hard-hitting points that the Dems just have not been getting in.

Let's face it - we've been playing nicey-nice. Look at the Pelosi issue - Holbrook made some hard-hitting comments, but as Greg Sargent noted, "I haven't seen any Democratic elected officials or direct Pelosi allies denouncing this story in such stark terms as Holbrooke did."

We still go out there acting as if it's not our job to hand the MSM the story on a plate. Well, guess what? The Repubs have been doing that for years, and it works, and we've been getting our asses handed to us.

Can we please put together a boot camp weekend for Democratic officeholders that teaches them how to do this? How to go into inverviews with background info, talking points, snappy one-liners - whatever it takes!

Until we master this, we're going to be doing nothing but playing defense.

Follow-up:

I cross-posted at Dailykos, and got a very interesting discussion going...