Whether or not it's just to deport people who've immigrated illegally when they come forth to report crimes is beside the point: it's bad policy.

The problem here isn't whether to punish one person or two when a person who has illegally entered the country is abused. It's whether we should punish one person (the abuser) or zero -- abuse vistims will not step forward if they know they'll be punished.

This law symbolically threatens to punish a class of criminal. In practice, this law won't result in that class of ciminal being punished; it'll result in a different class of criminal being let off.

It doesn't follow at all that women candidates are at a disadvantage because women are more likely to give to women than men are when women give only 20% of campaign contributions. Maybe women give to women 90% of the time, whereas men give to women 45% of the time. In that situation, women candidates are at an advantage!

That's before asking whether the lack of women candidates affects the fraction of money that goes to female candidates. If women made up 30% of candidates and received 40% of campaign contributions, women candidates would be at a huge financial advantage. (Obviously the question, "whither 30%?" raises questions about female candidates having an advantage. It merely illustrates that the disadvantage doesn't follow from this article.)

Next, it isn't at all clear from the statistic that 94% of women give time or money to charity that women aren't stingy. Is that more or less than men give? What fraction of women's incomes or time goes to charity, vs. men's? Even if women gave more time than men, that might not be because of greater generousity: women live longer than men; I bet that they spend a greater portion of their lives retired. And, while women who work tend to work (including unpaid work at home) a greater number of hours than men do, women in aggregate work fewer hours than men do: women who don't have paying jobs bring down the mean number of hours worked by women -- still including unpaid hours -- to fewer than the number of hours worked by men. Women in aggregate have more time to give to charities.

They don't, though have more money to give, and, finally, you miss a big reason why women give less money than men: "thanks" to institutionalized sexism, men have more money than women, and, in particular, have more disposable income. Of course men give more. They have more to give.

None of that disproves your thesis, which is probably correct. Female candidates assuredly are at a disadvantage when it comes to fundraising, and there may well be factors affecting male to female giving ratios other than net income. This blog post, though, is well below Broadsheet's standards.

Chris Dodd?

Really?

We Democrats are crazy, but are we really crazy enough to nominate another New England Senator without any significant national following or constituency? Only this time, a Senator without wartime heroism?

Nominating Chris Dodd seems like a mistake of historic proportions. Even as a Vice-Presidential nominee, other candidates are vastly more appealing. Bayh, Clark, and probably Biden or Richardson seem like better choices if you're looking for foreign policy experience, which is the only reason I can think of to choose Dodd and all of them seem like better geographical choices than a Connecticutter.

To which I respond:

"Why do you love The Man?"

Does Verizon seriously expect us to believe that they're opposed to open-wireless because it will cost Verizon less money to buy the bandwidth? I mean, I'm pretty dumb, but I'm not that dumb.

Even militant-leftist pacifist Bush-haters Seaberry and Shooter242 recognize that we're winning in Iraq. Why do the rest of you liberals hate America? Is it apple pie? Do you guys hate apple pie?

(Hey, MSM, am I doing this right?)

You get one establishment candidate and one non-establishment candidate. Hillary is clearly the establishment candidate, with early endorsements and with an early lead in fundraising. Hillary Clinton has done a great job of preparing to run for President.

So that means Edwards has to be the anti-establishment candidate, and for a moment he was. Unfortunately for Edwards, though, Barack Obama is a better candidate than John Edwards in just about every way. Obama has more experience, more charasma, a better pre-politics job, and a better record on the most important issue to many Democratic primary voters: the war in Iraq. Geographically, the two candidates are a wash -- we can't win Edwards' state, but we'll almost certainly win Obama's state. Edwards might help in nearby Virginia and Tennessee, but Obama might help in nearby Wisconsin and Minnesota.

I think Edwards might be a better candidate than Clinton would be (Clinton is a fantastic politician, but I think she's better at coalition building, deal making, arm twisting, and vote counting than she as at electoral politic. She'd make a great LBJ), but if you're settled on an Edwards-ish candidate I think you should choose the best Edwards-ish candidate, and I think that's Barach Obama.

South Americans strongly object to calling the United States "America," on the grounds that the pair of continents constitutes "America," and the United States constitutes only a fraction of that landmass.

Was Ms. Upton being culturally sensitive with her choice of phrase, or just totally insane? Do South Americans call people from the United States, "U.S. Americans?"