Sheldon Whitehouse: “competence, independence, and sound judgment are the lodestar of the administration of justice in this country.…”

“competence, independence, and sound judgment are the lodestar of the administration of justice in this country. Unfortunately, over the past few months, I and many Americans have been forced to question on all three counts those whom this President has appointed to lead the Department of Justice. Indeed, with each passing day, we sense more and more that something is gravely wrong. For example, we have learned about the misuse and abuse of the Department's power to issue national security letters under the PATRIOT Act--which, even under the most legitimate and benign circumstances, represents a truly imposing authority. As you know, a national security letter, or NSL, is a Government demand for private information, issued without a warrant to third parties such as banks, phone companies, and Internet service providers. In March, the Department of Justice's inspector general reported that NSLs were being ``seriously misused.'' Among other things, there were no clear guidelines for issuing national security letters. They were issued without proper authorization, there was sloppy recordkeeping by the FBI, and there were no procedures for purging a citizen's private information if the investigation was closed. We have also, of course, learned about the unprecedented firings of eight U.S. attorneys--dismissals which seem to have been motivated by politics, marred by incompetence, or, more likely, both.”