The AP reports:

A defiant President Bush warned Democrats Tuesday to accept his offer to have top aides speak about the firings of federal prosecutors only privately and not under oath, or risk a constitutional showdown from which he would not back down.

Democrats' response was swift and firm: They said they would start authorizing subpoenas as soon as Wednesday for the White House aides.

"Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for true accountability," said Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bush, in a late-afternoon statement at the White House, said he would fight any subpoena effort in court.

Wow, things are going to get ugly. Don't get me wrong the Bushies need to be accountable, but I do get the feeling that maybe Democrats are pursuing this scandal so vigorously because they aren't doing well in the Iraq debate right now.

What Next?

Walter Reed, Attorney Gate, what next? Uh-oh.

The Guliani Chavez Connection

Hugo Chavez is a client of one of Mr. Guliani's consulting firms. There is no real connection here, but would it be such a bad thing if there were?

Attorney-Gate

Matthew Yglesias on why firing US Attorney's for not being political hacks might be a bad idea.

Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in an election, took office a few months later, and swiftly fired all of Bush's appointees for US Attorney jobs. He then replaced them with people chosen, in practice, by the relevant local political stakeholders -- that state's Democratic Senators, if any, and a more complicated process in states represented by two Republicans. The message this sends to people working in US Attorney's offices throughout the country is that . . . US Attorneys will lose their jobs if the partisan control of the White House switched. George W. Bush, by contrast, fired a handful of US Attorneys who had displeased the Bush team's political fixers, under circumstances where (contrary to historic practice) the White House got to hand pick their successor. The message this sends to federal prosecutors throughout the land is that US Attorneys' are now considered part-and-parcel of George W. Bush's political team and that those who fail to act accordingly will be sacked.

Gonzales even admitted that things shouldn't have been handled the way there were. What does it take for people to get disgusted any more? Have we become desensitized?

Let's Count Divorces

Gulinani - 2
McCain - 1
Romney - 0
Gingrich - 2

Hilary - 0
Obama - 0
Edwards - 0
Gore - 0

Via TPM: Horses Mouth

Single Payer vs Single Provider

Megan McArdle poses the question of the day.

should one be required to stake out a consistent policy across school and healthcare funding? Or can some single-payer supporter explain to me why healthcare will work with what is basically a voucher system, but education won't?

To which Kevin Drum replies:

My initial answer is no, there's no reason to be consistent here. Healthcare has some unique characteristics that (I believe) end up pointing toward single-payer as the best, most efficient solution for universal coverage.

Drum goes on to say he favors the status quo in schooling: a combination of public schools and charter schools which are not funded or subsidized by the government. Basically what he favors is a single-provider system with some private education available for those who can afford it. I'm not sure that answers Megan's question to anyone's satisfaction. And I certainly don't feel that the best way to improve education in inner cities is to leave things the way they are.

Here is my attempt to answer Megan. I favor a single-payer healthcare system because there is a great amount of risk involved in health. The current system of pooling risk through employer based insurance is inefficient and becoming more so as employees become less attached to a single employer.

Education is less about risk than about providing a public good: educated citizens.

Update: Matt responds with a good point about the non-feasibility of a national single-player education system given our starting point. If we can agree that such a system is a good goal why are vouchers considered such a bad step toward that goal?

Talking Points Memo

I've been reading Joshua Micah Marshall's blog for many years now. It's good to see him getting the credit he deserves. I can still remember him asking his readers for money to travel to New Hampshire to cover the 2004 Democratic primaries. Now he has several full time employees.

I have one quibble with this LATimes article though. They say:

Neither side in the blog-MSM debate seems to have great appreciation for what the other brings to the party. Simply put, while mainstream media does the heavy lifting of careful, day-to-day and occasional in-depth reporting, bloggers have revivified political commentary, mainly through their exuberance.

In my experience bloggers do have a great deal of appreciation for what the mainstream media does. Almost all of the bloggers I read link to articles published online by traditional newspapers. And they completely recognize that they couldn't sit at their computers and pontificate on current events if nobody was around to report them. I think it has been almost entirely the MSM side of the debate which has lacked appreciation for what the other side does.

Google acquires Gapminder

Google acquires Gapminder. Gapminder is a data visualization company. Here is a very interesting presentation using Gapminder data visualization. It's a long video, but well worth it.

Demand Curves Slope Down

Kroger slashed prices and sales went up. Interestingly so did profits. If only they had thought of that sooner.

The Benefits of Global Warming

More room for forests to expand!

Rising temperatures fueled by global warming are causing forests of spruce trees to invade Arctic tundra faster than scientists originally thought, evicting and endangering the species that dwell there and only there, a new study concludes.

Global Warming

The North Pole is cold therefore global warming doesn't exist. Brilliant.

Twitter!

Check out Twitter on the side bar. I can send updates via my cellphone. Apparently it's all the rage with the kids.

Krugman on Purge-Gate

Paul Krugman on the US Attorney firing scandal Kevin Drum creatively calls Purge-gate.

Krugman:

The Bush administration has been purging, politicizing and de-professionalizing federal agencies since the day it came to power. But in the past it was able to do its business with impunity; this time Democrats have subpoena power, and the old slime-and-defend strategy isn't working.

What You Get

Is Walter Reed what you get when you let government into healthcare, or the result of an incompetent administration that is all to happy to contract out government services to private companies?

The GOP has less incentive to provide quality government services under their watch. If they screw up the scandal rolls off their back as an example of the inherent property of government bureaucracy. Even when that bureaucracy is a function of government that nobody believes should be eliminated. Say, care for our wounded soldiers, for example. Democrats on the other hand believe that government can work and needs to work. We should expect higher quality government outcomes under Democrats than Republicans.

Does the Government Provide Good Healthcare?

Is the VA hospital system a shining example of a well-run government program, or is it a dire warning to all those who would support a government run health care system?

Greg Mankiw seems to shoot from the hip when it comes to connecting the Walter Reed controversy to the VA system. Just a few years ago wasn't everyone singing the praises of the remarkable turn-around in the VA system? But now, according to the Washington Post "It Is Just Not Walter Reed ":

Across the country, some military quarters for wounded outpatients are in bad shape, according to interviews, Government Accountability Office reports and transcripts of congressional testimony. The mold, mice and rot of Walter Reed's Building 18 compose a familiar scenario for many soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan who were shipped to their home posts for treatment. Nearly 4,000 outpatients are currently in the military's Medical Holding or Medical Holdover companies, which oversee the wounded. Soldiers and veterans report bureaucratic disarray similar to Walter Reed's: indifferent, untrained staff; lost paperwork; medical appointments that drop from the computers; and long waits for consultations.

So which is it?