Following up on the firing of the prosecutors

With a promise:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, vowed to "get to the bottom" of the administration's December purge of federal prosecutors, and said that if they found that the prosecutors had indeed received positive job evaluations from the Justice Department before being booted, "there will be real trouble."

Update:

Justice Department officials have said that because United States attorneys are presidential appointees they may be replaced at any time without a specific reason, although they have said that none were removed for pursuing politically sensitive cases.

Another United States attorney asked to resign was Carol C. Lam of San Diego, who departed on Thursday at the request of the Justice Department. Two days earlier, Ms. Lam announced two indictments, including one against a former high-ranking Central Intelligence Agency official, in a corruption inquiry that began with last year’s guilty plea by a former Republican representative, Randy Cunningham, who was sentenced to more than eight years in prison.

And earlier in the article:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — A United States attorney in Arkansas who was dismissed from his job last year by the Justice Department was ousted after Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, intervened on behalf of the man who replaced him, according to Congressional aides briefed on the matter.

Ms. Miers, the aides said, phoned an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggesting the appointment of J. Timothy Griffin, a former military and civilian prosecutor who was a political director for the Republican National Committee and a deputy to Karl Rove, the White House political adviser.

Later, the incumbent United States attorney, H. E. Cummins III, was removed without explanation and replaced on an interim basis by Mr. Griffin. Officials at the White House and Justice Department declined to comment on Ms. Miers’s role in the matter.