As an IT worker, who knows exactly how easy it is to walk by a machine with a magnet (essentially wiping the data off it), what stops someone (ROVE) from hearing the authorization has been given, and magically declaring those emails have been deleted? I mean there is a reason cops bust into a drug dealer's home rather than phoning ahead and schedule a time to stop by.

Cut to the case. Impeach. The rest is a colossal waste of time.

You should also know that almost nothing is ever permanently deleted - there are backups among backups on server after server. If they actually wanted to produce the emails, it could be done. It's that Congress is asking the wrong people - they need to subpoena the hosts.

For a while I thought impeachment was a backward-looking waste of time, but now I share your fervor for getting them out of office before their term is up - and I think a lot more people are feeling that too, in the last week or so.

The problem is that we need to pick one big crime (oh, there are SO MANY) that we can prove they committed beyond a reasonable doubt. Once it gets to the legal level, all these niggling questions at all these niggling hearings are going to be EXACTLY WHAT IMPEACHMENT LOOKS LIKE. It's not like a revolution. It's a court case.

The hearings get on my nerves, but I think they are the necessary pre-impeachment war drums. Also, they basically ARE what impeachment will be. So not a bad way to cut our teeth and get the general public used to it. Also, as a Vermonter, I like to see my senator getting a forum to rip into the administration. :)

All that said, what do you think is the one big crime we should try to go after them for? It looks like the Plame thing could be it, if the hearings about the commutation go anywhere, but I wonder what you think it will be (since you are the most impeachment-focused person I have never met).

Personally, I'm hoping for something more like a revolution. Something peaceful, but which fixes the deep, deep problems of our systems of election and representation. A brand new constitution. Because this one ain't working, and what I see is that these criminals have only shown us the holes in the system, without making that many new holes themselves.

Holes to be plugged up first:

(1) The Electoral College

(2) The two-party system

(3) Campaign finance -- no more buying our candidates, and no more having to be a billionaire to run for office.

subset, Nothing is deleted, unless you have the ability (that I believe they do) to truly delete files. and I mean delete the backups delete everything, or there could just be a fire.

Then send them all to Gitmo. The (next) president needs to be prepared to act swiftly and with brute force against those who are harming this nation. All of our enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC.

Imagine Karl pushing the old "sodomy broom"...... Will we want him at the top, bottom or middle of the Abu-Graib-style "Pyramid of Male Nudity"? Maybe he'll supply the answer with a little help of the waterboard.