Columnist to Media: Think of Attorney Scandal in Watergate Terms

By: E&P Staff Marie Cocco, in her latest column, has some advice for the media: "It is time to stop referring to the 'fired U.S attorneys scandal' by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans."

Cocco -- a former Newsday of Melville, N.Y., staffer syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group -- added: "This is no botched personnel switch. It is not even a political spat between the fired U.S. attorneys and Bush-administration officials who deemed some of them insufficiently zealous in promoting the department's law-enforcement priorities. Connect the dots and you see an insidious effort to corrupt the American electoral system. It's Watergate without the break-in or the bagmen."

And she wrote: "The emerging picture is one in which widespread Republican claims of 'voter fraud' -- unsubstantiated in virtually every case examined closely by law enforcement officials, local journalists, state elections officials, and academics -- were used to stymie Democratic-leaning voter-registration groups and create a taint around Democrats... ."