Fair and Balanced Department of Justice

Kevin Drum calls attention to Paul Krugman's column today (behind the NY Times paid firewall), which reported on "a study by two retired professors, Donald Shields and John Cragan, who have taken a look at the partisan breakdown of corruption investigations by the Department of Justice under George Bush." In statewide and federal cases they found a total of 66 investigations. Here's the breakdown: •Democrats: 36 •Republicans: 30 This is roughly what you'd expect. Democrats are slightly overrepresented compared to their actual numbers, but only by a bit. There's nothing fishy. But the numbers for local cases paint a very different story. They found 309 investigations, broken down as follows: •Democrats: 262 •Republicans: 37 •Independents: 10 Kevin emphasizes that it is the number of investigations by U.S. Attorneys which are being counted here - y'know, those prosecutors who get purged if their work is insufficiently Republican friendly/hostile to Democrats.