We Fired Him Because... I Know, Because He's In The Navy!

I didn't get to this last week, but it is both hysterical and sad:

When he wasn’t doing his day job as U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias was a captain in the Navy Reserve, teaching foreign military officers about international terrorism.

But Iglesias’s military service in support of what the Pentagon likes to call the Global War on Terror (GWOT) apparently didn’t go down well with his superiors at the Justice Department. Recently released documents show that one reason aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cited in justifying the decision to fire Iglesias as U.S attorney late last year was that he was an “absentee landlord” who was spending too much time away from the office.

That explanation may create new legal problems for Gonzales and Justice. Iglesias confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he was recently questioned by lawyers for the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency, to determine if his dismissal was a violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), a federal law that prohibits job discrimination against members of the U.S. military.

Here's the story: Iglesias was an exemplary US Attorney, until Pete Domenici and New Mexico Democrats decided he wasn't helping Heather Wilson's re-election effort enough by prosecuting local Democrats. So they had him fired. But they had to come up with a reason after the fact. So they decided on the one thing - his Naval reserve service which keeps him out of the office 40 days a year - that is not allowed by law, job discrimination on the basis of military service. I think the worst thing about this is that all the Regent University-approved lawyers at the Justice Department DIDN'T KNOW that firing someone because he serves in the Naval reserve would be illegal.

We have 8 year-olds running this government.

By the way, Domenici and Wilson aren't out of the woods on this one by a long shot, and we may see Domenici have to face a public hearing to describe his conduct. New Mexico Democrats must be licking their chops.