It's not ancient history, folks

You may have read a bit about the name Renzi today.

Arizona's Rep. Renzi Is Indicted In Land Deal
Washington Post - 1 hour ago
By Ben Pershing Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) used his position in Congress to influence a federal land-exchange deal, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs, according to an indictment released yesterday.
Grand Jury Indicts Arizona Congressman New York Times

So, another scamp is indicted. Big deal. Right?

Well, actually it is a big deal, because when you pull one thread you never know what might unravel. Consider these comments by Max Blumenthal at The Nation (via Kagro X at Daily Kos):

In September 2006, just weeks before pivotal Congressional midterm elections, Paul Charlton, US Attorney for Arizona, opened a preliminary investigation into Republican Representative Rick Renzi of the state's First Congressional District for an alleged pattern of corruption involving influence-peddling and land deals. Almost immediately, Charlton's name was added to a blacklist of federal prosecutors the White House wanted to force from their jobs. Charlton is someone "we should now consider pushing out," D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 13. In his previously safe Republican district, Renzi had barely held on in the election. On December 7, the White House demanded Charlton's resignation without offering him any explanation.

Stacks of internal Justice Department e-mails subpoenaed by Congress in early March from the White House provided evidence that the dismissals of Charlton and seven other US Attorneys was a political purge orchestrated to install "loyal Bushies," as Sampson called them, into their posts and to protect Republican lawmakers like Renzi from indictments for corruption. The Administration's explanation that the ousters were "performance-related" has been discredited in light of the exposure of the e-mails--and especially proved false in Charlton's case. A model of professionalism, Charlton's office was honored with the Federal Service Award and hailed by the Justice Department as a "Model Program" for its protection of crime victims.

[Emphasis mine]

You remember Gonzogate: the whole scandal over the US Attorneys being fired for phony reasons but in a rather clear partisan pattern of quashing pursuit of Republican misdeed and urging pursuit of Democrat misdeeds.

Kagro X is right on, commenting:

Alberto Gonzales should have been impeached. Instead, American punditry insisted this was nothing, and Congress satisfied itself with allowing Gonzales to move on to the lecture circuit, unsullied by the criminality that average Americans who have given up on the sycophantic media knew was plain to see.

Emptywheel has a couple of posts on this (here and here). The latter one gets technical but the former one is helpful for a general grasp of things.
--the BB