One American job that should be shed

Why is Mary Beth Buchanan, a walking symbol of the near destruction of the U.S. Justice Department under the Cheney-Bush-Santorum gang, still on the job -- especially given this travesty of what passed for justice?

The charges against Dr. Cyril Wecht, the celebrity forensic pathologist and prominent Pittsburgh-area Democrat, will be dismissed.

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, a Bush appointee who had been accused of pursuing a politically motivated prosecution against Wecht, this morning filed a motion to drop the charges, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The new president typically exercises the ability to appoint new U.S. Attorneys shortly after taking office; there are some prosecutors, like Chicago's Patrick Fitzgerald, who manage to rise above partisan politics, but Mary Beth Buchanan is not one of them. Aggressively and overtly political prosecutions of people like Wecht and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman -- not unlike torture -- were more the hallmarks of a banana republic than the United States of America. The sooner the Obama administration moves to clean up Justice, the better.