And I'd imagine a successful prosecution will render her completely beyond political reproach and put her on the fast track to higher legal leadership (which she must already be on to be assigned this case).

So, if nothing else, an HN angle here is that the outrage of 3 months ago is completely undone and meaningless. Moreso than even the common cynicism of that time would have charged.

I have no basis to object to her assignment to this case in isolation (I would imagine that she's perfectly competent in prosecuting a case with less moral subtlety), beyond complaining that in a just world she should have at least fallen too far out of favour to be assigned this case, and that there must be other US Attorneys in line who could handle it at least as well. But it would be public-opinion suicide for any tech causes to widely protest someone who will soon become a public hero.

If anything, her role in the Swartz case shows she is aggressive and interested more in using the full weight of the law rather than "moral subtleties". In a case that is bound to be full of race issues, having someone who can filter all the noise and see the facts is an asset.

It's not particularly interesting. She's the U.S. Attorney for the Massachusetts district office and therefore, the official spokesperson and executive decision maker for federal prosecutions in her jurisdiction:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/

It's regional, and she's the boss of that region.

Yeah, I guess I had no idea USAs were segmented like that. Would it not make more sense to have them segmented by type of law, since they're all arguing in federal courts anyway? (Obviously I know nothing about law :-)

There are divisions by type of crime (financial, terrorism, government corruption, capital murder) but these types of crime often overlap and thus require overlapping resources and personnel from a DA's office...and someone has to be the person who decides how and what to allocate to each case.

This is not much different than police departments, which have separate departments for patrol, homicide, burglary, vice, internal affairs, etc....no matter how the squads are organized, there is still a chief and/or a commissioner who makes the policy and management decisions and who makes the official public statements.

  | Would it not make more sense to have them segmented
  | by type of law, since they're all arguing in federal
  | courts anyway

She probably has many specialized areas under her, but she's at the top of that particular power structure.

No, the US attorney is a per-state office. They're like attorneys-general for Federal law.

Nitpick: it's a per-district office. Massachusetts only has one US Attorney due to population and judicial district organization, but a number of states have more than one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney

I stand corrected, thank you.