What I find a bit unseemly about the entire issue is the fact that these fellows were originally appointed by the current administration, and, because they didn't bow to political pressure to follow the administration "line", they get $hitcanned. Their job performance is not considered and some of them had rather glowing comments in past performance reviews.

Whether it's common to Democrats or not is really irrelevant. The fact that an attorney general must tailor his daily workload to the politics of the current administration is just not appropriate, IMHO.