As I wrote in November and December, newly elected City Attorney Pete Holmes is letting go of several key attorneys who worked under Holmes's predecessor, Tom Carr, and even one who worked under Carr's predecessor, Mark Sidran. Included in the jettison was criminal division head Bob Hood, who would have been involved in prosecutions for the failed Operation Sobering Thought, and civil division head Susanne Skinner, who would have had a leading role in decisions about the botched Sonics case and the balloon man case. Now don't get me wrong: If I had a law firm, I'd want piranhas like Carr and Sidran working for me. And if I were Carr or Sidran, I'd want flesh-eating attorneys by my side. But that's the sort of office that Holmes ran against—and the platform that got him elected with a nearly two-thirds majority. Today, Emily Heffter at the Times reports that, of the 150 staffers at the city attorney's office, 14 have been shown the door—and some of them are getting petulant:

"It seems misguided to fire already-busy attorneys, the ones in the trenches representing the citizens in court and in city contracts, just to hire two more advisers to the city attorney himself ... who weren't elected, and whom no other city attorney has needed," Suzanne Pierce, a fired senior assistant city attorney in the torts section, said in an e-mail.

Twenty-year office veteran Ted Inkley said he wonders whether some of the attorneys who were not reappointed lost their jobs because of their involvement in controversial cases. ...

"I have never seen a more inept, disorganized and, quite frankly, vindictive transition than this one in 30 years of public life," said Hood, who headed the criminal division since 1998.

Oh, I'm sorry, but are the leaders of an unpopular, politically astray administration saying that (a) their involvement wasn't at all to blame for the blunders and (b) that the operation would be better if Holmes left things alone? Give us a fucking break. It seems pretty clear that Carr and Sidran could have used some advisers—some savvy folks close by to suggest that it was an atrocious idea to ban sitting on the sidewalk, prosecute bar employees on thin cases, defy city laws on pot, uphold the car-impound ordinance, or pursue a federal case to limit the locations a man can blow up a balloon. Instead, the people who were by Carr's side, those high-ranking senior officials "in the trenches representing the citizens in court and in city contracts," probably didn't have the most astute sense of priorities (or, in some cases, democracy or the constitution) or they would have told Carr and Sidran to stop. It makes sense for Holmes to shovel those folks out of the barn; that they're crowing about it only confirms that Holmes is making the right call.