Here's some interesting background from today's Argus Leader on the three judges who snubbed the Department of Justice and tried to appoint their own US Attorney:
Piersol of Sioux Falls is the chief judge of the state's federal district court. He was recommended to the position by Daschle and nominated by Democratic President Clinton. He once served as Daschle's lawyer.
U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann of Aberdeen also was recommended by Daschle, nominated by President Clinton and once served as the executive director of the state Democratic Party.
U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier of Rapid City was recommended by Daschle and nominated by President Clinton. She is a former U.S. attorney and once served as chairwoman of the state Democratic Party.
UPDATE: Kranz doesn't mention in the background on Piersol that Daschle brought his election eve lawsuit in Piersol's court:
LAST NIGHT, Tom Daschle threw his campaign into the shredder. What is it that makes South Dakota politicians do this kind of thing? There must be something in that Missouri River water that makes even the best of political pros tuck their thumbs into their armpits and squawk like demented chickens.
...
Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, as the lyrics in The Music Man once put it. Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more. Tom Daschle has turned into a squawking hen. Did Daschle's lawyers have to make their candidate a laughing-stock by filing the case with Judge Lawrence Piersol--a strong personal friend who was Daschle's own lawyer in the court contests during the 1978 election and who only four days before had given a radio interview praising Daschle? Did they have to call as their only witness a professional Democrat who had helped out with Howard Dean's triumphant disaster in the primaries and had been in the state of South Dakota for only 48 hours? And did they really have to insist that one of the early Republican poll watchers had--wait for it, now, it's gonna be a measure of human depravity--actually rolled his eyes to another poll watcher? Did they have to name the Republican candidate John Thune as the lead defendant, despite their utter lack of evidence or even claims about the candidate himself--thereby enshrining the case in the public record as Daschle v. Thune?
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