Here's an assignment for you, Senator Whitehouse: Can you convey the importance and seriousness of the U.S. attorney's job to the American public?

Do you suppose somebody at the Washington Post was showing a dark sense of humor in running this photo today with a glowing "early verdict" on Rhode Island freshman Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's first few months on the job?

By now, surely, everyone knows the new "old saying": that the most dangerous place to be in Washington is between Chuck Schumer (now New York's senior senator, of course) and a TV camera. Do you suppose the senator takes much kindlier to someone standing between him and a still camera, as his Judiciary Committee colleague Senator Whitehouse is doing here in the company of committee chairman Pat Leahy of Vermont?

Post reporter Paul Kane focuses on Whitehouse's role as the junior-most member of Judiciary, where he has made a particular impression with his hands-on experience as a prosecutor, including four years as Rhode Island's U.S. attorney in the Clinton administration. "Here's a man who knows what it's like to be in the courtroom," says chairman Leahy.

Whitehouse's experience has been especially useful in the Purge-Gate investigation. His interrogative inventiveness--he gets last crack at questioning among Judiciary's 19 members--has even drawn plaudits from Texas GOP dim bulb Sen. John Cornyn: "He's the bottom chair of the committee. I've been there before, and usually all the good questions get asked by your turn." (Whitehouse's secret? He prepares "multiple choices" for his questions.)

It was Whitehouse's questioning that drew from Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales, the information that he has served as lead prosecutor in a grand total of one criminal case and no civil cases.

Kane reports that Whitehouse, taking note of then Gonzales aide Monica Goodling's experience (a few months as a deputy in the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria), then "lectured Sampson":

"Their careers as United States attorneys are brought to an end. And in some cases, it appears that the make-or-break decision is being made by somebody who graduated from law school in 1999, who may or may not have ever tried a case. This is pretty remarkable to me."

Whitehouse confirms what we all know intuitively: that U.S. attorneys are always going to be subject to political pressure. It didn't used to work the way it appears to now, though:

While serving as a federal prosecutor, Whitehouse said he received edicts from above similar to those issued by the Gonzales Justice Department, which has cited failure to adhere to these mandates in several of the firings.

"Everybody indict someone for health-care fraud in August," he said with a sneer, referring to one mandate for "health-care fraud month." Those edicts were ignored by the Clinton administration's federal prosecutors, he said, as part of the "natural tension" between U.S. attorneys who know their districts and appointees at "main Justice" looking to curry favor with the White House.

Now, of course, political directives to U.S. attorneys appear to come from the heartbeat of the administration, and ignoring those directives . . . well, you ignore them at your peril, as a bunch of loyal Republican appointees have learned.