While the most transparent administration in history continues to stonewall Congress on its legal theories for supporting a would-be dictator in Honduras, dismissing a civil-rights case against nightstick-wielding Black Panthers, and flouting the plain language of the Constitution on the D.C. Voting Rights Bill, it’s time once again to check in on the president’s equally laughable commitment to disinfect the Justice Department, removing all traces of political taint.

When it was Scooter Libby in the crosshairs, Democrats were awfully sanctimonious about the grave felony of lying to the FBI. The cornerstone of our legal system, they reminded us, was the obligation of every American — or at least every American who is not the 42nd president of the United States — to provide truthful information when questioned in an investigation. After all, this is America. Thanks to our Constitution, no one is forced to submit to interrogation by the police, the FBI, a grand jury, Congress, or a judge. If we have any good-faith concern that answering questions may incriminate us, the Fifth Amendment gives us the right to remain silent. But with that privilege, we were reminded, comes an obligation: If one chooses to speak, one must speak truthfully. If one doesn’t speak truthfully, that is a serious offense, because false answers obstruct justice, sending our investigators on wild goose chases and taxing the resources of our overburdened courts.

The offense is especially egregious, Democrats lectured, when the prevaricator is a government official — especially a lawyer. Unlike laymen, government officials serve the public, implying a solemn trust to support, rather than impede, the administration of justice. And lawyers know better than anyone how lying perverts the truth-seeking process. Thus, there was no getting around it: It didn’t matter that the FBI’s grilling of Libby arose out of a contentious policy debate, that he did not commit the crime for which he was actually being investigated (in fact, nobody did), or that his prosecution effectively criminalized our politics. He was a public official, he was a lawyer, and he lied to the FBI, so he had to be prosecuted to vindicate all that is good and right. Case closed.

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Well what if he were not only a lawyer and a public official? What if he were also a political operative for a top Democrat? What if he were the candidate nominated by Pres. Barack Obama to be the top federal law-enforcement official in the state of Colorado — the United States attorney responsible for making such judgment calls as deciding who should be prosecuted for making false statements to FBI agents?

Meet Stephanie Villafuerte. She is a former prosecutor from Denver, where she was chief deputy to Bill Ritter when he was district attorney. In 2006, when Ritter successfully ran for governor of Colorado, she was one of his top aides.

During the heated campaign, Ritter was rocked by the revelation that, while he was DA, his office had given lenient treatment to hundreds of illegal aliens. They were permitted to plead guilty to crimes far less serious than the ones they actually committed, enabling them to avoid deportation. The illegals included a heroin dealer who — thanks to a sweetheart plea deal — was released and went on to commit a sexual assault in California.

That alien’s name is Carlos Estrada-Medina. That was problematic because, when Ritter’s office had dealt with him on the drug case, he had used the alias “Walter Ramo.” When the Republican running against Ritter ran an ad about the case, Villafuerte, the veteran prosecutor, realized that it would only have been possible for Ritter’s opponent to confirm that “Ramo” was Estrada-Medina if someone had accessed the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. It is a federal crime to access the NCIC system for purposes unrelated to law enforcement, such as political campaigns.