Drudgico's condescending promotion notwithstanding, my Spidey-sense tells me liberals are going to really enjoy this video of John Edwards going Greenwald and railing against the media powers that be.

I know I did.

The good folks at the journal Democracy and the Hamilton Project asked me to speak at a recent forum on the concept of a social contract.  Here’s my chin music…see if it resonates.

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Five shoppers at a Wichita, Kansas convenience store simply stepped over the body of 27 year-old LaShanda Calloway who lay on the floor bleeding severely. None stopped to ask if she was in need of assistance. None even bothered to call 911. Ms. Calloway died later that day at a Wichita hospital of injuries resulting from her stabbing; she had been an innocent bystander, wounded in someone else’s fight.

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I have a somewhat serious question for anybody--liberal or conservative, impeachment advocate or opponent--who's been closely following the last two weeks' events. Here it is: If Jeffery Taylor, in a fit of good conscience, chooses to adjudicate the contempt citations against Harriet Miers and John Bolten and anybody else who may soon be cited, will the president allow the case to move forward, or will he, driven by pique, dismiss the Constitution, like the Geneva Conventions, as quaint and fire his tenth U.S. Attorney?

My guess is it will never get that far. My guess is that Taylor will announce, as Bush expects him to, that he honors the president's wishes and refuses to hear the case at all. When that happens--and only then--should Congressional Democrats begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and the vice president.

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If most of the members of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee spent as much time studying the industry over which they have jurisdiction as they do reciting talking points from their Bell patrons, then it’s just possible that consumers and the economy might actually see some benefits from what the panel does.

The July 24th hearing on oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided a fine opportunity for the Subcommittee members to show what they know about their topics. Depending on how you look at it, they either didn’t disappoint, or they did.

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As Americans begin to demand serious health care reform, insurance companies and creditors that fund medical bills directly and through credit cards and home equity loans could lose a lot of money. So the Judiciary Sub-Committee hearings on medical bankruptcies last week must have been a little scary. Representatives from both parties seemed to agree that there was a problem in how America pays for health care and that many good families are suffering. For one of the witnesses, the display of sympathy from both Democrats and Republicans was too much to bear.

Todd Zywicki, the one professor who is called to every hearing to defend the 2005 bankruptcy amendments, fired off an op-ed in today's Washington Times. He and his coauthor attacked the hearing, calling research by Dr. David Himmelstein, Dr. Deborah Thorne, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and myself "junk science." Witness Donna Smith was dismissed as a "single-anecdote photo opportunity." The logic seems to be that the data don't matter and the personal stories don't matter, therefore, we Congress shouldn't reform either health care or bankruptcy.

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Your wife is dying of cancer and you read about a drug-maker developing a product that could slow the progress of the disease. Her doctor says it shows promise; the price of the company’s stock has tripled in just six months. But the new drug has not yet won FDA approval.

Your spouse wants to try it. But her doctor tells her that it’s too late to enroll in an ongoing clinical trial. You could apply to the FDA and the company for access under a “compassionate use” provision, but this is a bureaucratic process that could take weeks, or months—time your wife doesn’t have. In the meantime, the FDA won’t let you buy the drug directly from the manufacturer.

Shouldn’t your wife be able to buy it --even if it doesn’t have the FDA’s imprimatur? After all, the life she would be risking is her own. How can a government bureaucracy stand in her way?

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The Histadrut won their general strike after less than 24 hours. They got a 5% wage increase when the government's last offer was less than 1%. The public didn't rebel--and the courts supported the negotiating and strike process. American unions would salivate with such good labor laws. Meanwhile, to answer some of the questions on this site-Histadrut only supports workers (both Jewish and Arab) inside the international borders of Israel. In the occupied territories, there is a Palestinian General Trade Union federation, which is allied with Fatah (its general secretary was recently held against his will by the Hamas). Histadrut has good relations with this federation. Additionally, Histadrut does not work with migrant workers, but a wonderful NGO called Kav L'Oved does and its Migrant Workers Hotline.

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Citing the Clinton precedent, M.J. Rosenberg writes:

"[I]mpeachment is no longer the political nuclear bomb it once was, especially if one knows in advance that conviction and removal from office is unlikely to occur. Accordingly, impeachment proceedings are essentially the best means of getting information to the public which is otherwise unavailable."

I'm glad M.J. is beginning with the premise that actual impeachment and removal of Bush ain't happening, at least based on the current dynamics. I do not share his optimism about impeachment proceedings serving as a "lever" to bring Bush to heel, given everything we know about the man. Nor do I really understand Josh's suggestion that initiating a pre-doomed impeachment effort will somehow serve as a legal precedent reducing the impact of Bush's scofflaw behavior.

So the fundamental question remains whether Democrats want to take up the "I-word" as a political exercise. And other questions quickly follow.

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Edwards has announced an impressive plan to cut taxes on working and middle class families, while restoring a higher rate of taxation for the wealthy to pay for his middle class tax cuts.

AP, however, makes this dumb analysis:

By calling for tax increases for the wealthy, Edwards risks opening himself to criticism that he's a tax-and-spender in the mold of Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee who said he would raise taxes. In the election, Mondale suffered a 49-state defeat, losing everything except his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia to President Reagan.

Mondale said specifically he was going to raise taxes on EVERYONE, not cut taxes on the middle class, but that distinction is lost on the AP writer. For the record, Gallup at other polls show that two-thirds of the public think the wealthy and corporations are paying too little in taxes.

We've been flooded by email since Josh's post last night on impeachment. To take a little weight off of my gmail, I thought you might like to fight with each other here.

Josh argues:

Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.

If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.

He's still not pro-impeachment, but he's leaning that way.   Are you?

In an op-ed in the July 25 edition of the Wall Street Journal, "Private Equity, Public Benefits", Steve Forbes defends the multi-billion dollar carried interest tax loophole enjoyed by the nation's private equity fund managers. In doing so, however, he rehashes the same misleading and debunked litany of myths used by the lobbyists swarming around Capitol Hill to defeat the bill that would close this tax break.

Here's a catalogue of Forbes' arguments and the problems with them:

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Yesterday’s unanimous ruling by a federal appeals court striking down Bush administration rules governing the work hours of truck drivers provides a revealing window showing how the conservative movement’s “smart regulation” approach is nothing more than a ruse to boost corporate profits while putting public health and safety at greater risk. In this case, the relevant agency imposed an increase in the maximum allowable driving hours for truckers – from 60 hours to 77 over 7 consecutive days, and from 70 to 88 over 8 days. The rules would have increased the maximum period of consecutive driving from 10 hours to 11 before taking a rest time.

Here are some of the key components of the right’s “smart regulation” boondoggle as manifested in this particular example, but which have been emulated and left almost entirely unchecked throughout the executive branch since Inauguration day, 2001:

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Those are the words of Angelo R. Mozila, the chairman and chief executive of Countrywide Financial, the country’s largest mortgage lender. After all those assurances, from all those housing experts, that nationwide house prices never fall, it now looks like house prices are falling.

The basic story is that we are looking at a downward cascading price path. Increasing defaults lead to more desperation sales, which puts further downward pressure on prices. Further declines in prices, lead to more defaults. The soaring default rate also constricts mortgage loans as investors become less anxious to give away money for people to buy overpriced homes. When buyers have more difficulty getting mortgages, many get shut out of the market, which puts more downward pressure on prices. It ain’t pretty, as Mr. Mozila and others are now recognizing.

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Israeli workers declared a general strike this morning at 6 am. The Histadrut trade union confederation, which represents all the public sector workers, declared the strike after reaching an impasse on wage and benefit increase negotiations with the Israeli government.There's no trash collection, no post office service, gov't ministry staff is not at work, no trains, the ports are closed--and the border crossings are closed. By tomorrow, if there isn't a resumption of talks, it's possible that air service will either be halted or disrupted. As an interested party (I'm due to fly out after a month here in a few days...), I am watching the news eagerly, but in the meantime, I am also using this time to reflect on how a strike says something about where Israel is in today's world.

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And I'm back! Thanks to Evann for taking care of things in my absence. California (the Homeland) was wonderful. It turns out the weather there is quite a bit nicer than it is here in NYC.

I was able to go unplugged for most of the trip, so catch me up. What did I miss?

Here's a new idea for the Internet age: Let's use the combined computing power of the Internet community to write legislation.

The topic of the bill will be something about which many Internet users are familiar, the deployment of high-speed Internet, in which the U.S. is particularly deficient contrasted with other countries around the world.

This is Dick Durbin's big experiment.

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Political activist Grover Norquist has been one of the right-wing’s most forceful voices over the last two decades. Along with Newt Gingrich, he was one of the main architects of the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. His track record makes him a powerful voice on the right. His name sparks fear in the hearts of many on the left.

One of Norquist’s current causes is the protection of the tax subsidy enjoyed by the managers of hedge funds and private equity funds. While people with middle class jobs, like teachers and firefighters, typically pay a 25 percent tax rate, and higher paid professionals like doctors and lawyers pay a 35 percent rate, fund managers are taxed at just a 15 percent rate on their earnings.

This special deal is the result of the fund manager tax break which applies a lower tax rate on compensation earned by the people who manage hedge funds and private equity funds than on other wage income.

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