Riginslinger, " It's customary for incoming administrations to disimiss all the federal attorneys, and start with new appointees, unless that attorney is involved in an ongoing investigation."
It's perfectly legal -- the new administration does not have to show "cause" for replacing the attorneys in the Judicial Dept. -- but I don't know that it's all that "customary."

What IS unusual is for those attorneys NOT to be perfunctorily replaced at the outset of a new administration but to be fired later, mid-term, for not prosecuting enough people in the opposing party(ies) or for pursuing prosecutions of people in the administration's own party. That's what the G W Bush administration has been doing. And the Dems are wimps for not investigating those firings. The Justice Dept. is not supposed to be an arm of any political party. Those attorneys are supposed to apply the law with equal vigor, no matter who is suspected of violating it.

As for Fitzgerald fearing Obama would fire him, I'd say there's little basis for such fear. Obama's already shown willingness -- too much, in the minds of most progressives -- to keep on key people from the Bush administration and to behave in a "post-partisan" way.