DemfromCt wrote a two-part post title the "Politics of Iraq", here and here that I think completely misreads the situation. Dem writes:

Toothless legislation attracts votes, but doesn't get the job done. Legislation with teeth doesn't attract a consensus or a working majority (at this time) because there isn't one in Congress. . . . The urgency to adjust the status quo outweighs the loyalty to the base, and far outweighs loyalty to an unpopular President, that GOP congress critters feel. The country thinks Congress is dithering. Explaining it away as "I have to keep my shrinking Republican base happy, even though they are unrealistic about the war because Fox News, Joe Lieberman and I don't tell the truth about what's happening there" is not going to fly. . . . Sure, the votes aren't there yet, but everyone in Washington in this kabuki show knows that's coming. . . . It's the GOP's war, and it's Bush's war. If they don't face up to that reality, and at least start preparing their base for the inevitable, they run the risk that 2008 will turn out to be 2006 on steroids. . . .

This, it seems to me, misses entirely the dynamic that is developing. It is the Democratic Congress whose approvals are falling, as clammyc notes. The GOP is much where they were in 2006. The Dems have dropped significantly from where they were. And the danger is of Dems offering safe harbor to those Republicans vulnerable on Iraq. More.

I have been tough on Jim Webb due to his refusal to consider using the Spending Power to end the Iraq Debacle and I will continue to be, but one thing I always have believed is that Jim Webb, like Wes Clark, conveys confidence, even arrogance, when discussing national security issues that; something Democrats desperately need as a political matter. Webb does not cower to the nonsense spewed by Republicans with their talking points. Case in point:

Matt Yglesias points to a great article by Louis Uchitelle in the NYTimes about our new Gilded Age tycoons and how they "earned it." I agree with Matt on the key quotes:

The Question of Talent

Other very wealthy men in the new Gilded Age talk of themselves as having a flair for business not unlike Derek Jeter’s “unique talent” for baseball, as Leo J. Hindery Jr. put it. “I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career,” Mr. Hindery said, “who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear.”

He counts himself as a talented entrepreneur, having assembled from scratch a cable television sports network, the YES Network, that he sold in 1999 for $200 million. “Jeter makes an unbelievable amount of money,” said Mr. Hindery, who now manages a private equity fund, “but you look at him and you say, ‘Wow, I cannot find another ballplayer with that same set of skills.’ ”

A handful of critics among the new elite, or close to it, are scornful of such self-appraisal. “I don’t see a relationship between the extremes of income now and the performance of the economy,” Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Board chairman, said in an interview, challenging the contentions of the very rich that they are, more than others, the driving force of a robust economy.

(Emphasis supplied.) Hindery seems to believe he benefitted not at all from anything the government and society provided him, from infrastructure, to legal recourse, to customers who could afford what he was selling. All hail the great Hindery! Let the rest eat cake. More.

Bill Moyers' interview of Bruce Fein and impeachment proponent John Nichols is illustrative of how the impeachment movement gives short shrift to the most effective tool for checking an out of control President - the Spending Power. Nichols in particular is so hot for saying the word impeachment that he utterly ignores the most effective check on Executive Power the Founders intended and provided. Look at this exchange:

BRUCE FEIN: . . . [W]e do find this peculiarity that Congress is giving up powers voluntarily. Because there's nothing right now, Bill, that would prevent Congress from the immediate shutting down all of George Bush's and Dick Cheney's illegal programs. Simply saying there's no money to collect foreign intelligence-

BILL MOYERS: The power of the purse-

BRUCE FEIN: --the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there's no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said, "If I do it, it's legal." So that it we do find Congress yielding the power to the executive branch. It's the very puzzle that the founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches. And--

BILL MOYERS: Well, what you just said indicts the Congress more than you're indicting George Bush and Dick Cheney.

BRUCE FEIN: In some sense, yes, because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch. And you're right. They have basically renounced-- walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check. It's not an option. It's an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. . . .

Absolutely correct. And guess what. This is the most serious threat to the checks and balances of the Constitution. This is what we should be screaming about. This is what we should be demanding from the Congress. And guess what, if exercised by a Democratic Congress, without the support of Republicans, it will be effective. It will stop the excesses. Stop the Iraq Debacle.

But what do impeachment proponents care more about? This:

From those of us who live near Lake Michigan: thanks a heap, Indiana.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery—already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes—can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

This is not a comforting admission:

[Paul Higginbotham, chief of the water permits section at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management] said regulators still are unsure about the ecological effects of the relatively new refining process BP plans to use.

Berkeley voters may get a second chance to vote on a city initiative that would establish procedures for opening medical marijuana dispensaries. A California judge made a preliminary decision to nullify the election that resulted in the proposal's narrow defeat. The reason:

The county reused voting machines from Diebold Election Systems Inc. without saving sufficient data to carry out a recount or review the election process, [Gregory] Luke [representing Americans for Safe Access] said. Officials failed to save key evidence even after the suit was pending, he said. Data from the vote in question has only been found on 20 of the hundreds of machines used in the election, according to Luke. ...

In addition to ordering another vote on Measure R, Judge Smith's preliminary ruling called for the county to pay the US$22,604 cost of the recount, as well as attorney's fees and the cost of a trip to Diebold offices in Texas.

The judge is expected to make a final ruling (which may be appealed) within two weeks.

For some time now, the RIAA has been obtaining subpoenas from federal courts that compel colleges and universities to disclose the identities of students associated with IP's that RIAA believes were used to download music. Having identified the students, the RIAA threatens litigation unless the students fork over a few thousand dollars. This heavy-handed approach to copyright enforcement hasn't inhibited illegal downloading, but it's created a nice cash machine for the RIAA and its lawyers.

A U.S. District Judge in Virginia tossed a judicial wrench into the machine on Thursday when he refused the RIAA's ex parte request for a subpoena. Judge Kelley's tightly-reasoned decision concludes that no law authorizes a court to order the disclosure. Do you suppose RIAA will cite his decision in its future ex parte requests for subpoenas?

Rudy Giuliani expressed a view common to the GOP:

I think that if we've learned any lessons from the history of the 20th century, one of the lessons we should learn is stop trying to psychoanalyze people and take them at their word. If we had taken Hitler at his word, Stalin at his word, I think we would have made much sounder decisions and saved a lot more lives.

An Al Qaida in Iraq leader said:

Abu Sarhan's views suggest[] a more restrained view of the United States, which he considers an occupier but one that should not leave immediately. . . . "The real enemy for the resistance is Iran and those working for Iran," he went on. "Because Iran has a feud which goes back thousands of years with the people of Iraq and the government of Iraq."

(Emphasis supplied.) Today, a Maliki lieutenant said:

[T]he U.S. was treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory." He sharply criticised the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations, embarassing the Iraqi government with its tactics and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in its campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think if we take these statements at face value, staying in Iraq means staying mired in an intractable and increasingly vicious sectarian civil war. What do you think Rudy?

I'm going to take advantage of the great weather and then attack a massive amount of wiretap discovery for the rest of the day.

Here's an open thread where you can pick the topics.

The New York Times reports on a new study by an economist at Harvard that says federal public defenders get better results than CJA lawyers (privately appointed lawyers under the Criminal Justice Act.) The 40 page study is here.

How much better? The study says the PD's clients sentences were on the average 8 months shorter.

I think federal public defenders do a great job. I always laugh when I get a call from a prospective client who tells me they want to get rid of their pd and hire private counsel so they can get a "real lawyer."

I also do a few CJA cases a year. It's how we private lawyers give back -- our way of doing pro-bono, taking cases for far less than we get in our private practices. In my district, we're not contract lawyers in that we don't agree to take a percentage of the court's case load or even a set number of cases a year. We get called occasionally, when the Public Defender has a conflict, and if we're free (usually 2 days from the time we get the call), we agree to take the case.

I'm not an economist or a statistician, but I think this study is seriously flawed. The first problem I have with the study is this incorrect premise:

More...

Dave Weigel and Matt Yglesias are having fun picking on Marty Peretz's personal assistant and I can't resist piling on. Peretz's Kirchick wrote:

[ R]egime change in Iraq was the official, bipartisan policy of the United States government years before it became fashionable for journalists to write tiresome, 5,000-word articles linking Ahmed Chalabi, PNAC and Paul Wolfowitz.

(Emphasis supplied.) I am tired of those pieces too. But they at least have the virtue of being true. Chalabi, Wolfowitz and PNAC were intimately connected. Unlike the claims made in those once fashionable articles that connected Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and mushroom clouds.

The other difference between those two types of tiresome articles is one type consists of rather meaningless blather. The other contributed to the launching of the most disastrous strategic blunder since Vietnam.

Iraqi PM Maliki says that the US can leave now as far as he is concerned:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the Iraqi army and police are capable of keeping security in the country when American troops leave "any time they want," though he acknowledged the forces need further weapons and training. The embattled prime minister sought to show confidence at a time when congressional pressure is growing for a withdrawal and the Bush administration reported little progress had been made on the most vital of a series of political benchmarks it wants al-Maliki to carry out.

Even better is this from one of Maliki's lieutenants:

[O]ne of his top aides, Hassan al-Suneid, rankled at the assessment, saying the U.S. was treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory." He sharply criticised the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations, embarassing the Iraqi government with its tactics and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in its campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq.

There seems to be no one but Bush, the GOP and the Neocons who want the US in Iraq. Oh, and Al Qaida.