Lam's Bar Award

by emptywheel

I'm not surprised that San Diego's Bar Association has named Carol Lam attorney of the year. Nor am I surprised that she credited the San Diego USA office in her acceptance of the award:

"I'd like to be accepting the award on behalf of the United States attorney's office," Lam said. "The attorneys in that office surely deserve it more than I do."

I'm just surprised by Darrel Issa's spokesperson's comment on the award:

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, whose district covers much of North County and Temecula, was a vocal critic of Lam, contending she was not prosecuting alien smuggling and other border cases enough.

Issa's spokesman, Frederick Hill, said Wednesday afternoon that the congressman's criticism of Lam was focused on a "policy difference," and that Issa believes Lam deserves the recognition the bar association is giving her.

"Congressman Issa thinks the bar association has made a good choice," Hill said Wednesday. "Carol Lam has made important contributions to San Diego."

Issa, after all, spent the two years leading up to her firing badgering her about immigration rates, without equally badgering his colleagues to give her more resources to pursue immigration cases. Whether his motivation for doing so was pure (a real concern about immigration), political (grandstanding for his anti-immigration consitutents) or truly evil (trying to provide a reason to fire Lam before she indicted the entire GOP delegation from CA), this comment just rings of gloating to me. After all, if she truly made important contributions to San Diego, then it is a damn shame she was fired by the political bosses of Issa's party. And at the very least, Issa provided a convenient excuse to oust her.

Kind of nice for Issa, then, that he can now celebrate Lam as if he had nothing to do with her firing.

Comments

[Jonno]

Well, Issa, not as upstanding a citizen as Lam, me thinks.

[meep!]

You might want to check out this article in the WaPo's Capitol Briefing blog: there's going to be a symposium with three of the USAs in Washington state on the firings. (It also apparently counts as continuing law education credits if you know any lawyers out there who might be interested.)

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2007/04/fired_us_attorneys_convening_i.html

[janinsanfran]

Darrell Issa is a dangerous loose cannon in California politics. He made a fortune in selling car alarms; and had his own brushes with the law, allegedly over car thefts! The 2003 recall of Gray Davis was going nowhere until Issa jumped in with funds because he thought he could sneek into office in the aftermath. The high end GOP candidates who jumped in, especially Arnold, easily scared him off. He is one of the few Arab Americans in Congress -- and has been supportive of the Palestinians, meaning he is really off the reservation.

Not my idea of a nice guy, but nothing simple about him either.