It seems like whenever the subject of impeaching President Bush arises, the debate centers on which party would reap the political benefits. Since Democrats would lead the impeachment, the issue then becomes whether or not impeachment would boost Democratic electoral prospects.

Thus, the obvious -- and far more important -- question of what impeachment would mean for the country and the world gets overlooked.

There are two reasons for criminal law: punishment and deterrence. Criminal law, as witnessed by the U.S. attorneys scandal, is not something that should be used to make a political point.

All but the most extreme political hacks agree that the impeachment of President Clinton was about politics, not criminal law. And all but the most extreme political hacks agree that Democrats shouldn't impeach President Bush as revenge for the impeachment of President Clinton.

Most of us agree that we should never again impeach a President for political reasons. But at the same time, we should never fail to impeach a President for political reasons.

Democrats may fear that impeaching President Bush would look like revenge for impeaching President Clinton. But if he deserves impeachment, letting him walk to avoid that appearance would be just as bad.

Electoral politics is the short-term battle for power. Over the long-run, the differences between Democrats and Republicans are not nearly as large as they seem in any given campaign.

Iraq, the biggest issue of the day, reflects this reality. The war was started with widespread Democratic support, and now that it has become clear that we must withdraw, Republicans are jumping off Bush's ship. Let us not forget that a Democratic president bears the primary responsibility for Vietnam; many more Americans died in that conflict under LBJ than under Nixon.

Generally speaking, I prefer Democrats to Republicans, but I have a greater preference for freedom, justice, peace, and sustainable growth than I do either party.

Therefore, I believe that President Bush should be impeached if he has established a clear and consistent pattern of lawlessness and abuse of power.

Think about President Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon. Quite likely, the short-term impacts of that decision were positive for the country: Nixon left office and the Watergate scandal instantly became history. But if Nixon had actually faced impeachment and then criminal responsibility for his actions, might not the long-term impacts have been better for the country? Instead of sending a message that the worst possible scenario for a President is losing his job (something that will happen anyway), wouldn't it be better to declare that a President who believes he is above the law will go to jail?

At some point, we need to put our foot down and say that if a President continually and habitually and intentionally violates the law, that President should be removed from office and sent to jail. For some, whether or President Bush rises to that level is a matter of debate. But that's the debate that we should be having, not a debate about poll numbers.

In thirty years or sixty years or one hundred years from now, when children learn about this presidential administration in grade school, do we want them to learn that the Constitution is more important than politics, or that politics is more important than the Constitution?

Joe Conason is a terrific writer: he never shows fear, he's always well-informed, and his words are a joy to read.

But even the best screw up from time to time, and apparently today is Joe Conason's turn, as he takes John Edwards to task for encouraging anti-war demonstrations on Memorial Day.

Conason is worried that Edwards might offend "the sensibilities of everyone who believes the holiday should be solemnly commemorative rather than politically noisy." He says:

Whether Democrats and progressives can win back the respect -- and the votes -- of soldiers, veterans and their families is a critical question for the future of American politics. It will never happen if they believe that the left devalues or ignores their sacrifice.

Conason is wrong.

Take John Kerry, for example. In 2004, he spent Memorial Day honoring his fellow Vietnam veterans. As far as I can tell, he didn't utter a single critical word about Iraq. In fact, later during the campaign he said that he didn't regret his vote for the war. And we all know what happened to him.

There's no doubt that if Kerry had protested the Iraq War on Memorial Day, he would have outraged the American right. In fact, they probably would have created an organization devoted to distorting his military record. They might have even made up a story about him attacking a fellow veteran.

Wait a second. They still did those things And you know what? Kerry didn't fight back quickly enough. Perhaps if he had been in fighting posture all along -- maybe even starting with protests on Memorial Day -- he could have won.

We'll never know for sure.

But one thing we do know: Democratic presidential candidates like Dukakis and Kerry followed the appeasement strategy recommended by Conason. They both lost.

Let's try something different this time, eh?

For all the debate we have in this country about welfare spending, we sure seem to focus on the programs focused on reducing poverty. In general, conservatives find them to be wasteful theft from taxpayers, liberals see them as part of a strategy to expand the middle class. And almost everybody forgets that illegal immigrants pay taxes too!

You can see how easy it is to forget about corporate welfare.

Well, you can rest assured: corporate welfare is alive and well. It's thriving, really, in the Bush Administration.

A report prepared in 2006 by the House Committee on Government Reform, provides a detailed look at federal contracting, one component of the corporate welfare state. (Other components include things like special tax breaks, expansion of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, and the use of public resources for private gain.)

Here's the reality of the federal contracting piece of the corporate welfare state, through 2005:

• Under Bush, contracting spending increased from $203.1 billion in FY2000 to $377.5 billion in 2005, an average annual increase of 13%
• Nearly half of the increase in spending under Bush was spent on federal contracts
• In 2005, 39% of the discretionary federal budget was paid to private contractors
• More than 90% of the increase was consumed by the Department of Defense, which now accounts for 70% of contracting spending

Ah, but isn't this an example of reinventing government by infusing entrepreneurial spirit into the public sector?

Unfortunately, no. It's more like an example of reinventing graft.

• The U.S. Government Accountability Office, agency inspectors general, Defense Contract Audit Agency, and other government investigators identified $745.5 billion in problem contracts
• The top five federal contracts received 21% of all federal contracting spending
• The type of agency you'd expect to benefit for outsourcing, the Department of Transportation, has actually had a 29% reduction in contracting
• Contracting out services like intelligence actually makes it harder for the government to hire its own employees!

Theists can be evil:

Navy vet: Chaplains tried converting me:

Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, he didn’t realize he would get a hard sell for Christian fundamentalism along with treatment for his kidney stones.

Miller, 46, an Orthodox Jew, said he was repeatedly proselytized by hospital chaplains and staff in attempts to convert him to Christianity during three hospitalizations over the past two years.

He said he went hungry each time because the hospital wouldn’t serve him kosher food, and the staff refused to contact his rabbi, who could have brought him something to eat.

Miller, an Iowa City resident and former petty officer third class who spent four years in the Navy, outlined his complaints at a news conference in Des Moines on Thursday. The event was sponsored by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an activist group based in Albuquerque, N.M.

The Seattle Times reports that single women are increasingly being priced out of the booming condo market in Belltown, where prices jumped 23% in 2004 to a median of $360,000.

"A decade ago, single men and single women each were about 25 percent of the market" but today "a third are single men" and "17 percent are single women."

This trend is an important impact of the income gender gap, which is alive and well -- even in Seattle, one of our nation's most progressive cities.

According to the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey, in 2005 the median male full-time worker who lived in Seattle earned about $50,007, 18% more than the median female full-time worker. The gap was 31% between men and women with college degrees.

Another way of thinking about the gap: an income of about $66,000 is enough to purchase a $270,000 home. Among full-time workers living in Seattle, 35% of men and 26% of women earned more than $65,000 (2005 ACS).

These statistics don't prove that men are sexist pigs (hey, I'm a man!) any more than they prove that women like work for less money (at least that's what I hear).

What they do prove is that for whatever reason there is a fundamental economic power disparity between men and women.

It's a disparity that we should eliminate sooner rather than later.

From the NYT:

President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping

Even if Bush did ultimately bring the program into compliance with the law, it's clear that for quite some time it was operating outside the bounds of his law -- with Bush's knowledge -- and that it was not until Comey, Ashcroft, and others intervened that Bush changed the policy.

Update: Glenn Greenwald has an excellent analysis of the issue.

The Bush Administration said one of the reasons it fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, who led the Duke Cunningham prosecution, was that she did not prosecute enough gun cases.

Are you kidding me?

The Bush White House has all but replaced George Washington's picture on the one dollar bill with a mug of Wayne LaPierre, and they're going to try and argue that Carol Lam wasn't tough enough against guns? Like anyone would ever believe that the Mayberry Machiavellis would care about something like that.

Not only was it a stupid, unconvincing excuse, it wasn't even right, according to both Lam's testimony and that of Jay Comey, the former Deputy Attorney General (who appointed Patrick Fitzgerald special prosecutor in the Libby case).

Dear lord. They are not only the sorriest bunch of criminals ever to disgrace the White House, but they are also some of the stupidest people ever to have served there.

I'm starting to wonder: if Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, would Bush be doing a better job as president?

Turns out that it was all a misunderstanding. Vista Media Center still sucks!

Chris Lanier posts that Softsled could be coming to a PC near you.

For the unitiated, Softsled isn't an actual product, it's the a code name for a supposedly cancelled Microsoft project to allow PCs to become software-based Media Center extenders. Basically, this means that a standard Windows box would have all the media extender features of the Xbox 360.

It's baffling that Microsoft hasn't delivered this obvious feature yet, but it hasn't.

Today, however, it seems that Bill Gates is announcing a that Softsled will finally be integrated into Windows. I've got my fingers crossed that it comes sometime soon! Vista Media Center will suck substantially less with Softsled!

I wonder if Fox will ask Mitt Romney about this during tonight's presidential debate? Meanwhile, in case you were wondering what his favorite book is:

Even though the mainstream media -- and congressional Democrats -- are dropping the ball by not investigating the public corruption angle of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, Josh Marshall and TPM are keeping the pressure on.

The Bush administration has suddenly -- and without explanation -- withdrawn its nomination of the lead Jack Abramoff prosecutor (and top DOJ public corruption official) to the federal bench.

Debra Wong Yang is the former U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles who was hired by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, the law firm representing Congressman Jerry Lewis, the subject of a corruption probe by Yang's office.

In the last five years, Gibson Dunn has only announced hiring three new attorneys directly from government jobs out of 58 total announcements. Yang was one of those three; the other two also worked for her office. Each of the remaining 55 hires were either from private sector jobs or returning to the firm after working for Republican officials.

The L.A. Times, however, reports that:

Whatever officials in Washington might have intended, Yang and Lam's departures had no effect on the investigations, which continue unabated, sources close to the inquiries said this week.

Gee, you think their sources might have said that? Perhaps the sources are the new hacks the Bush Administration has installed over there. Then again, the sources could be right. Regardless, the real issue is what the Bush Administration's intent was, because if anyone in the DOJ or White House was aware of an attempt to move Yang out of the way to make life easier for Congressman Lewis, that's what we call obstruction of justice.

"You have so many players involved, it's ridiculous that you could make an investigation disappear, especially one that is high profile — because those are the ones all the assistants want to work on," she said.

Levenson said there are subtle ways, however, to let a case "die a slow death."

Supervisors could assign the prosecutors other matters to work on or divert resources away from the case. They could balk at issuing subpoenas or seeking approvals of various sorts from Washington. And when it comes time to seek an indictment, particularly if the case is not a slam-dunk, the U.S. attorney or even the Justice Department in Washington could waver and tell the prosecutors that they need to do more investigating.

Yet even this scenario is more likely to happen in a John Grisham novel than in real life, Levenson said.

I would have thought that lots of things were more likely to happen in novels than in real life -- until I started writing novels and the Bush Administration took power.

I actually find it laughable to dismiss claims that the Bush Administration would try and apply political pressure to U.S. Attorneys, especially in the midst of a huge scandal in which it is very clear that they did just that!

I do give credit to the L.A. Times though -- at least they've followed up on this story, which is worth more attention than the press has given.

Seattle Times:

The Mariners placed Weaver on the 15-day disabled list on Friday, his first ever DL stint...to take Weaver's place on the roster, the Mariners recalled LHP Ryan Rowland-Smith from Class AAA Tacoma.

You gotta' be bad to be replaced by a guy with a 5.68 ERA at AAA.

Last week, Michael Barone offered his thoughts on what describes as "The Realignment of America." In his view, the dominant feature of this realignment is a domestic migration from large coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles (he calls them "Coastal Megalopolises") to newer inland cities like Phoenix and Atlanta (which he calls "Interior Boomtowns"). In a nutshell, he says:

The native-born are leaving "hip" cities for the heartland.

Barone offers a theory explaining his "realignment" theory:

High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations--these are driving many Americans elsewhere.

Ah. Now I see. It's those damn rich liberals (housing), Democrats (taxes), and foreigners (burgeoning immigrant populations). Those right-wing hacks are so predictable.

The thing that Barone doesn't mention is that foreign-born non-citizens are joining the native-born in leaving his "Coastal Megalopolises," which kind of puts a damper on his theory.

Not surprisingly, however, Steve Sailer lapped up Barone's article. Sailer is eager to embrace and extend Barone's thesis, arguing that the native-born are fleeing coastal cities because:

[The native-born's] old cities are filling up with immigrants who outbid them in the housing market—typically, because the foreigners don't mind living with an entire extended family  under one roof

Sailer is dismayed that foreigners are pushing Americans out of coastal cities, especially Southern California. He trashes the government for choosing "to turn over much of this thin strip to foreigners."

Let's do quick reality check, why don't we?

It's true that Barone's Coastal Megalopolises have larger foreign-born populations than his Interior Boomtowns, 26% to 15%. It's also true that Coastal Megalopolises lost population between 2000 and 2005, while Interior Boomtowns gained.

But do the reasons have anything to do with immigration, particularly illegal immigration?

It doesn't appear likely:

• In Coastal Megalopolises, both the native-born and foreign-born non-citizen populations declined from 2000 to 2005, by 8% and 2%. (Many foreign-born non-citizens have documentation and are in this country legally, so don't confuse that category with illegal or undocumented immigrants)
• In Interior Boomtowns, both populations increased, native-born by about 8% and foreign-born non-citizen by about 28%.

In short, it's not just native-born that are leaving Coastal Megalopolises. It's also foreign-born non-citizens. And the foreign born non-citizens are going to Interior boomtowns at three times the rate of native-born Americans! One out of three new residents in Interior Boomtowns was born abroad.

Clearly, then, the native-born Americans that are moving to these cities are not trying to avoid foreigners as Barone and Sailer argue. In fact, the two groups have a lot more in common than either Barone or Sailer allows. First of all, everybody is human, something that is all too easy to forget. Second, they are moving to Interior Boomtowns in search of cheaper housing and economic opportunity. The facts don't support Barone's or Sailer's claims about immigrants.

But who needs facts when you have an ideology?

Jury acquits Spanaway man of bestiality charge:

TACOMA — A Pierce County jury has acquitted a man accused of having sex with the family dog. ...

He said he believes his wife made up the story because she is seeking to end their marriage.

[She] contacted police and told them she'd caught her husband engaged in sexual intercourse with their pit bull, Sara, last October. ...

The case generated outrage among animal welfare advocates across the globe, many of whom called for McPhail to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Where's Ann Coulter now? I thought she was supposed to be outraged when political activists try to influence the criminal justice system.

Here's a very interesting post on building a distributed, open source Google. I think it's a neat idea, but building a simple clone of Google is not that much of a value add. However, if there were a way to use web surfing activity without compromising privacy, I could see a quantum leap in the quality of search results. You'd have something of a mixture of social bookmarking like Digg and vast quantities of web pages like Google.