Most creators would probably prefer to have their intellectual property pirated than to be robbed at gunpoint. And then there's this point of view:

NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing when it should be doing something about piracy instead.

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year."

Ken Fisher takes issue with Cotton's odd sense of priorities.

In today's NYT White House Memo, Sheryl Gay Stolberg insists that a confrontation over assertions of executive privilege in the investigation of U.S. Attorney firings would be risky for the White House and for Democrats. The risk for the White House is obvious: if the administration loses the battle and can't continue to stonewall, the truth might come out. The risk to Democrats is less clear.

Stolberg says Democrats "run the risk of looking like they are waging a fishing expedition." Even if Alberto Gonzales and other DOJ witnesses to date hadn't been so evasive and inconsistent in their testimony, and if White House emails hadn't disappeared, the "fishing expedition" charge would still ring hollow. At this point, it's obvious to the casual observer that Democrats are being stonewalled in their search for answers to legitimate questions. If this is a fishing trip, it's one the American public is willing to take.

To support her "Democrats need to worry about issuing a subpoena" thesis, Stolberg turns to Ari Fleischer. Democrats should take advice from Comical Ari?

Here's Fleischer's logic:

Finding that his previous analysis of the Politics of Iraq has fallen flat, Jonathan Alter grasps at straws and argues that the Dems' problem is one of sloganeering. Steven Benen gently guts Alter's argument:

. . . Alter's broader argument is off-base. He argues that Democrats have the right policy, but it's not "getting through" to the rest of the country. I disagree -- they have the right policy, it's getting through just fine, but Dems are coming up short executing their own strategy. Indeed, Alter suggests what's standing between Democrats and broader acceptance of their policy prescription is "some way of framing their position that commits firmly to withdrawal from Iraq, but doesn't make them look like surrender monkeys." Alter's heart is in the right place, but he's missing a key point here -- the public has already accepted the Democratic war policy. The problem isn't in framing; Dems' poll numbers started to sag only after they gave in and gave the Bush White House the war funding bill the president demanded. The sales pitch was irrelevant. . . . I think he's fallen into the same belief that tends to dominate the DC conventional wisdom -- that the Dems have fallen short in convincing Americans that it's time to withdraw from Iraq. That's just not so; Americans already want out and are waiting for Washington to catch up.

What Steve said.

Via Matt Yglesias, the ugly face of the Right Blogosphere, duly endorsed by the all important Instapundit link:

Not that I'm saying homosexuality is incompatible with masculinity, of course. Consenting biweekly to having one's duodenum battered with the manic hydraulic fury of a tricked-out V-12 jackhammer manned by an epileptic Con-Ed worker with an ancestral oath of vengeance against asphalt would, I think, tend to butch one up, at least as regards one's pain threshold.

Perhaps we can all understand better now what we are dealing with. The violent hatred expressed by the Right is truly toxic. What say you Howie Kurtz? Joe Klein?

There should be consequences for the high school pranksters who used a pilfered key to enter Hendrick Hudson High School to scatter "150 alarm clocks in the shape of houses or butterflies," set to go off at 9:15 on the last day of school. The pranksters wrapped the clocks in duct tape to make it difficult for annoyed teachers to remove the batteries.

Some community service for the criminal trespass might be appropriate -- that's what happened to "dozens of accomplices who donated as little as $1 to the stunt" -- but bringing felony prosecutions for planting fake bombs is a serious overreaction. The joke may or may not have been funny, depending on your sense of humor and/or general fear level, but the clocks clearly weren't intended as a bomb scare. Senior Alex Kane has a more mature view than those who abuse the criminal justice system by bringing unreasonable charges to make the point, yet again, that "everything changed" after 9/11:

"I think we have this climate of fear now, where even if it's a harmless senior prank, it gets tied up into thinking about terrorism," Kane said. "I understand the need to be vigilant in the face of threats. But you need to balance that out and not have people jumping out of their seats every time something kind of goes wrong."

Happy Fathers Day, everyone. How about a Sunday open thread?

The must-read of the day in my view is Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib, The General's Report.

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint.

A sample of what we didn't see:

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees....Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it.

Why didn't we see them?

Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.

More on Rumsfeld:

Uncomfortable on the hotseat, Michael Elston has resigned from his position at the Justice Department. Elston was chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, who resigned last month.

Mr. Elston is the fifth Justice Department official who played a role in the dismissals to resign in recent months. In addition to Mr. McNulty, others are D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and Monica M. Goodling, a senior aide to Mr. Gonzales.

The transcript of the disbarment ruling for Durham D.A. Mike Nifong is now available here. The Sunday papers will be filled with editorials about Nifong's disgraceful conduct. But, the money quotes are these:

The prosecutor, as any defense lawyer will tell you, is imbued with an aura that if he says its so it must be so. And even with all the constitutional rights that are afforded criminal defendants, the prosecutor merely by asserting a charge against defendants already has a leg up. And when that power is abused, as it was here, it puts constitutional rights in jeopardy. We have a justice system but the justice system only works if the people who participate in it are people of good faith and respect those rights.

....It is very difficult to find any good in this situation that brings us here. I can only think of a couple things. One is that there are very few deterrents upon prosecutorial misconduct. For very good policy reasons, prosecutors are virtually immune from civil liability. About the worst that can happen to them for the conduct of a case is that the case can be overturned. The only significant deterrent upon a prosecutor is the possibility of disciplinary sanction. And here the most severe sanction is warranted.

While many, and perhaps most prosecutors don't cheat and lie, Nifong is not the only one. This happens to many defendants all over the country who don't have the resources for top-flight lawyers who will fight for them to the end.

According to the Innocence Project,

Bump and Update: (live blogging court ruling now)

The panel has deliberated. Disbarment is the only appropriate recommendation. The root of this case is self-deception arising out of self-interest. We had a prosecutor in a case where his self-interest collided with race, sex and class. If part of a John Grisham novel, it would be too contrived. He was facing a primary and he was politically naive. We can draw no other conclusion but the initial statements he made [to the media] were to further his political ambition.

Then, he refused to change his mind and accept the facts as they developed even in the face of a declaration of actual innocence by the Attorney General. (Even yesterday, on the witness stand, he clung to the mistaken belief that something happened.)

Aggravating factors found: selfish motive, a pattern of misconduct, multiple offenses, refusal to acknowledge misconduct, substantial experience in practice of law.

Mitigating factors: lack of prior record and character.

Finding: Aggravating factors outweigh mitigating factors.

This matter appears to be an aberration in both Nifong's career and the way justice is handled in North Carolina. But we have to recommend the most severe penalty, disbarment.

More...

The White House has been straight out lying about the US Attorney Purge. As Steve Benen points out, just yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow lied about the lying:

Q: Okay, but at the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based. MR. SNOW: That is something -- we have never said that.

Of course, Tony Snow himself said exactly that:

"[W]hat the President has -- the Department of Justice has made recommendations, they've been approved. And it's pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will."

Was the Media always so ho hum about being lied to by the White House? Why no. Of course when President Clinton's White House did not give the Beltway Gasbags the answers they wanted, it was a Constitutional Crisis:

The Beltway Pundits think they are moderate by virtue of being Beltway Pundits. Joe Klein is one example. Tim Russert is another:

Hannity: I think the Democrats have gone further left than anybody would have anticipated. I think these bloggers have really gotten to them. I think they’re really positioning themselves that they’re gonna have a very difficult time moving center. Do you see that?”

Russert: Absolutely…

The view expressed by Russert is extreme. I could argue that just by virtue of agreeing with Hannity Russert's is an extreme view but instead I'll cite a poll:

Were Democrats asleep at the switch Friday, or what?

The Homeland Security funding bill (H.R. 2638) came up for a vote in the House. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) tacked on an amendment preventing what he calls "sanctuary cities" from receiving federal funding. What's a "sanctuary city?" It's not defined, but Tancredo uses it to describe cities in which local police don't assist the feds in busting the undocumented. He lists Denver and Boulder as examples.

Tancredo has tried to get this amendment passed seven times before and failed each time. Today, in a surprise move, he succeeded. The vote was 234 to 189, with 50 Democrats voting in favor. (More on the votes here.)

THOMAS describes the Amendment:

More...