One of the items that I have had enough of seeing in the news is the House of Representatives’ investigation into the firing of several US Attorneys last year. There was no crime committed. The US Attorneys are political appointments that serve at the will of the President. If there is anything I learned (and remember) from my political science class, it is that. There is no need for the President to justify why he is firing, he doesn’t even need a reason, although it is nice to have one.

So what does the Judiciary Committee do? They launch an investigation into something that is not illegal, or unethical. The Committee wastes its time and the time of everyone involved in any way of the investigation. They try to get former presidential aides to testify under oath, in a public hearing. The President has said that executive privilege exists, and that they don’t have to testify. Bush said that they could testify in a closed door hearing, not under oath, and that the Committee could get the answers to its questions. But what do they do instead? The Committee says no, and subpoenas them instead. Bush still claims executive privilege, and while one of the former aides answers some of the questions and claims privilege on others, one of the aides does not show.

Now the Committee is considering contempt charges. There was no reason to issue the subpoenas in the first place, so when this finally goes to a court, I predict that there will be a ruling that it was proper for Bush to claim privilege, and that the aides do not have to testify.
Why does this issue bug me? There are so many other things the Committee could be doing that would benefit this country. Better pay (and security) for judges and courthouses, prison overcrowding, gun control, drug issues, the list can go on and on.

So why has this issue dragged on for so long? The people in charge of the Committee (the Democrats) don’t like the way the war in Iraq is heading, and this is really the only way they can punish him for it. But the whole Iraq war is something for me to talk about some other time.

So last week I wrote about how I was going to be posting new items more frequently. I was aiming for once a day…but seeing as this is my first post in a week, that really didn’t work out. Its not that I don’t have any ideas, I have a few (and hope more come to me when those three are written), its that I don’t seem to have time to make the posts. The three ideas I have now require more thought to make than this one, because I want them to be quality posts.

So what is my plan? Get the three ideas that I have written as soon as I can, hopefully today at a more normal time than I’m writing this one, and then post one after its written, one tomorrow, and one the day after that. By Sunday, I hope to have more ideas about what to write about.

My site related project is coming along fine, and even though I could make it public today, I want to hold off on that. There are a few more items that I want to improve on that I think would be a benefit, and so they are showstoppers. One of the better features that I want to get in involves a WordPress plugin that I want to use for a page that I hope nobody will ever see (other than on purpose) - the 404 Page Not Found error page. The problem is that I cannpt get this to work on my test blog, and since I can’t understand why, I’m just waiting for the plugin to be updated.

I think that’s all I have to write about for now. Hopefully I get one or two items written later.

Yesterday I talked about using a points system to keep me motivated. Today I thought about what I would use to get points, and have decided on the following:

• Making a post - 20 points
• Working on the site-related project - 10 points
• Leave a comment on someone’s site - 5 points
• Sending a trackback or linking to someone’s site - 2 points

My goal for the immediate future is going to be 30 points - that means that if I make a post and work on the project everyday, I’ll meet it. After some time, I’ll take a look at how things are going, and either up the target number of points, or rework the list or the numbers.

One of the RSS feeds that I subscribe to is ProBlogger. Why might you ask, since I don’t blog professionally, or for money (which is the site’s main focus)? It because the same things that will help the pros make more money should also help me increase traffic here, which right now is a main goal of mine.

Some of the items that are posted there don’t really apply to me, while others I have some interest in, while some others do interest me a lot, but I never seem to implement them. So I was reading yesterday’s articles, and one of them was about keeping the momentum going. Seeing how this is my first post in about 10 days, this was something I was very interested in.

The article talks about a points system that makes you do things for points (obviously). Some things, such as making a post, are worth more points than easier things, such as commenting on someone’s blog. This system was originally left as a comment to another post, and the poster’s goal was 50 points a day. Obviously I wouldn’t want to start with a 50 point target right away, or use the point system that was outlined in the article due to me being in the middle of a big project (but then again, I could incorporate the project into the system).

So right now, the points system is something that I am going to implement to get me posting more than once every 10 days…its just a question what items are going to be on the list, and how many points they are worth. But that will have to wait until later tomorrow, because I have a physics test to take in just over 8 hours