With all the cries of "foul" over the U.S. attorney firings, I think it might be helpful for readers to know just how U.S. attorneys are selected.

The job has always been a political plum. The U.S. Attorney is nominated by the President, based on recommendations from the Senators in the particular District. Almost without exception, the appointee is from the President’s political party. When a new President is elected, we get new U.S. Attorneys.

The Assistant U.S. Attorneys get to stay, under civil service rules. They can't be ousted because of political reasons.

The travesty of the current U.S. Attorney firing scandal is not that U.S. Attorneys are being replaced. That is expected after an election, such as the one in 2004. It's that it's happening in 2007.

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Every year when the March Madness brackets come out, the same brouhaha breaks out about Mid Majors vs. Big BCS Conferences.

This year it is Arkansas, Illinois, Purdue and Stanford standing in for the big conferences vs. Drexel, Appalachian State and a few others (interestingly Syracuse is complaining too this year, rather disingenuously imo - 10-6 in the Big East is not what it used to be because of unbalanced schedules).

The argument it seems to me is simple - by and large the 5th, 6th and 7th place teams in the big conferences will be better than the "deserving" mid major teams. The question is not that for me, it is whether the idea of having the tournament include lesser teams - the 14, 15 and 16 seeds are mostly from tiny conferences where the teams are almost certainly not worthy in conventional terms - extends to the 34 at large bids. But who has a beef here really? Let's think about it on the flip.

Maybe not all the Netroots, but certainly this man:

. . . This bill makes the war illegal, which is just as unenforceable as defunding the war (which Bush can easily bypass with Enron-style accounting). There is $800B in that pot, and you know the money can be moved around.

Where does this man come up with this? How in heavens does it make it illegal? By saying so? Does it repeal the Iraq AUMF? No. This is pure and simple, ignorant arrant nonsense.

From Greg Sargent:

. . . Though the bill mandates withdrawal by Fall 2008 at the latest, it's going to be at least partly a disappointment to some House liberals. That's because language that was in earlier drafts that would have clipped funding after the deadline -- as opposed to merely declaring the war illegal -- has been taken out. House leaders will argue that the bill does do its job, because it declares the war illegal beyond a certain date. But liberal House sources say this removed language was critical in ending the war in practice, because it would enforce the war's end with the power of the purse rather than requiring a trip to court in hopes that judges will end the war.

Remember the Kosovo case Kucinich brought? A court case to end a war? Just pathetic. Let's see Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers sell this one.

This is simply horrible. Just horrible.

The Congress wants to hear from Rove:

Congressional committees are now demanding the testimony of President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, in the burgeoning investigation into the reasons behind the unusual firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has helped lead the Senate Judiciary Committee's examination of the dismissals of the federal prosecutors, cited new reports connecting Rove to those who wanted to oust at least one of the U.S. attorneys. "There's an emerging pattern that is extremely disturbing and everyday the sanctity of U.S. Attorneys as neutral enforcers of law without fear or favor is diminished," Schumer said. "We will get to bottom of this."

We'll see if they subpoena Rove. I'm not that confident in our Leadership these days.

I've got some gut shots for the Final Four that will meet in Atlanta.

Florida out of the Midwest. Unless something strange happens, Florida seems to have the easiest region. TChris' team Wisconsin, has lost its center and its swagger. Frankly, their talent level seems a notch below the other top teams to me. While Alando Tucker is obviously very good, I think he is not as good as some want him to be - I think it is a function of talent problems for the Badgers. Neither Oregon nor Maryland seems threatening to Florida to me.

My other Final Four picks are Georgetown, UCLA and Texas A&M. For now. Discussion to come.

One of Matt Stoller's best qualities is his willingness to roll up his sleeves and wrestle over an issue with you. He does that in his response to my post on Iraq and the Netroots:

Respectfully, your pet solution is not THE ANSWER. There is no THE ANSWER. Strategy is actually putting out a set of parameters that actually map to reality, and the reality is that there is not the discipline in the party to do what you suggest . . .

Is Matt's view of the "reality" of the situation accurate? I don't think so but really that is irrelevant. Part of being an activist, part of what the Netroots is supposed to be about, is trying to CHANGE the unacceptable reality of today. Matt seems resigned to accepting what he views the "reality" to be and to just raise the white flag on the issue.

In its never-ending battle against the undocumented among us, Congress enacted the Deficit Reduction Act. The goal was to deprive undocumented residents of Medicaid. But, it's also depriving U.S. citizens.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways — for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.

“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human Services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Uh-oh. Another Justice Department official is on the hotseat. This time it's Michael J. Elston, Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

Fired U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins of Arkansas testified he felt threatened by a phone call from Elston. Elston says it's all a misunderstanding and he's "horrified" by it.

In testimony and in an e-mail to fellow attorneys, Cummins said there was a "threatening undercurrent" to the call. He said Elston warned that the Justice Department would retaliate if the attorneys talked to the media or volunteered to testify in Congress.

Elston said he never intended such a message and recalls only expressing regret that the attorneys issue is "playing out in public."

Completely off topic, but I've come to conclude that as you get older, downsizing is a fact of life. I've been doing it for several years now. And, with more of us taking charge of our elderly parents' downsizing, we often have to decide what to do with their lifetime accumulation of belongings.

The New York Times this week had a feature article on how we have become a society "hooked on storage."

Many of us pay thousands of dollars a year to store our kids' first drawings, the artifacts we brought back from other countries on vacations, the furniture that will not fit in our downsized homes or apartments.

Is it worth it?

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As always, I speak for me exclusively

I can not tell you how frustrating it is to me to read this post from Matt Stoller:

I've honestly been very confused about the debate over Iraq, and much of my time has also been taken up with the Fox News scuffle over the past three weeks. Fox News was a fun fight, fun because it was so clean-cut. The objectives were clear, and what victory meant was clear.

Iraq is different. It's huge. It's the problem. . . . [T]he progressives are being pretty unstrategic and obnoxious, though that doesn't really matter either. The Blue Dogs, as usual, suck, though that too doesn't really matter.

If you're looking at it from the inside, all you see i[s] bleakness. It's unlikely that we'll be able to get a bill through the House, and through a Senate filibuster, and through a White House veto, and past a constitutional crisis. Right? The votes aren't there. They just aren't.

Matt has not been paying attention and neither has Chris Bowers.

Speaking for me only, and now also speaking for Paul Krugman:

The good news is that for the first time in six years, it’s possible to hope that all the facts about a Bush administration scandal will come out in Congressional hearings — or, if necessary, in the impeachment trial of Alberto Gonzales.

Come on Jeralyn, join the Shrill! The water is just fine . . .