Perhaps the most entertaining part of the White House press conference yesterday was when Bush expressed sympathy for the purged prosecutors.

“I also want to say something to the U.S. attorneys who reside. I appreciate your service to the country. And while I strongly support the Attorney General’s decision and am confident he acted appropriately, I regret these resignations turned into such a public spectacle….

“I’m sorry this, frankly, has bubbled to the surface the way it has, for the U.S. attorneys involved. I really am. These are — I put them in there in the first place; they’re decent people. They serve at our pleasure. And yet, now they’re being held up into the scrutiny of all this, and it’s just — what I said in my comments, I meant about them. I appreciated their service, and I’m sorry that the situation has gotten to where it’s got. But that’s Washington, D.C. for you. You know, there’s a lot of politics in this town.”

It’s striking when you think about it. The Bush administration decided these prosecutors weren’t loyal enough, and were taking on politically-inconvenient cases, so it fired them without cause or explanation. Then the same administration dragged their names through the mud, accusing of them (falsely) of poor on-the-job performance.

And now Bush blames “Washington, D.C.” for all the bad things that have happened to them? It’s almost as if Bush was telling the prosecutors he fired, “Don’t blame me; I just work here.”