This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 11th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

James Comey has been fired from his post as head of the FBI.

Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, says the rationale

offered by the White House as the driver of the firing is pretty hard to swallow.

We spoke yesterday. You know, James Kumi has been unpopular for different reasons on both sides of the aisle

the last few months, but I thought the choice to keep him in his post was one of the

better signs during the transition. The FBI director is important to

understand is a position that has a 10 year term since

1976, it's been a 10 year term, precisely because the idea is that it's not supposed to be one of these political

football positions that just gets a new occupant every time a new administration

comes into power.

It's precisely supposed to cross administrations.

And the idea is both practically and symbolically

that it's supposed to be, in a sense, above the vicissitudes

of electoral politics, which is why it is vanishingly rare

for FBI directors to be fired.

It's happened basically once in our history 24 years ago

when Bill Clinton removed William Sessions

in the aftermath of a pretty blistering ethics report suggesting he had

misappropriated government resources for his personal benefit but that's really

it the FBI directors in general are not fired.

...