the bush justice machine still has most of its cogs

It seems to obvious once it's pointed out, but until I read Paul Krugman's op-ed piece, it hadn't even occurred to me that the firing of those 8 prosecutors would also mean the prosecutors who weren't fired were probably going all out for the Bush agenda.

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn't go along with the Bush administration's politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance.

I wish I could say I was smart enough to think of that myself, but that's why it's great people like Krugman are out there pointing things out to those of us who aren't connecting all the dots.