Innovative research into applying ideological mapping techniques that work well for congress to state legislatures lets us finally answer the question: Do ideological patterns in state legislatures resemble those in congress? The answer: It depends! California and Michigan display Beltway-esque polarization patterns. Florida, however, looks very different and Pennsylvania is pretty different as well. So far, those are the only states this has been done for.

If you want the full explanation, see this PDF of Boris Shor, Christopher Berry, and Nolan McCarty “A Bridge to Somewhere: Mapping State and Congressional Ideology on a Cross-Institutional Common Space.”

As ThinkProgress noted earlier today, the only reason Alberto Gonzales gave for firing U.S. Attorney Margaret Chiara was that “we had to send someone out from Main Justice to help mediate some kind of personnel dispute.” Legal Times writes that this is a dangerous precedent, since U.S. Attorneys “should use the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys to help with management issues in the office.”

“What has the attorney general now done?” asks Thomas Heffelfinger, who was U.S. attorney in Minnesota from 2001 to 2006, and who worked closely with a number of the fired prosecutors. “He’s now told U.S. attorneys that are now there, ‘If you ask for help, you run the risk of getting fired.’ How is that helping the management function of the U.S. attorneys?”

The White House recently considered Gen. Jack Sheehan to fill the post of ‘war czar.’ Sheehan refused the position, explaining that the “residue” of war hawks like Dick Cheney is preventing “pragmatists” from producing the policy change that is needed. Sheehan wrote a Washington Post op-ed explaining his position:

We cannot “shorthand” this issue with concepts such as the “democratization of the region” or the constant refrain by a small but powerful group that we are going to “win,” even as “victory” is not defined or is frequently redefined. … These huge shortcomings are not going to be resolved by the assignment of an additional individual to the White House staff. They need to be addressed before an implementation manager is brought on board.

For taking on Cheney, the right-wing Washington Times published a smear screed against Sheehan on Friday. The Times’ military reporter Bill Gertz — who frequently propagates information that comes from Cheney’s office — wrote that Sheehan is a “liberal military officer” and a “defeatist” opposing the Iraq war.

Gertz goes on to claim there have been many “shortcomings” in Sheehan’s career. Engaging in guilt-by-association tactics, the Times tries to link Sheehan to convicted spy Ana Belen Montes. He also writes that Sheehan walked out of a speech by neoconservative James Woolsey on Wahhabist terrorism.

Sheehan pushed back on what he called “character defamation,” noting the White House would not have considered him if his reputation were so tarnished:

Gen. Sheehan, in an e-mail, dismissed both claims about his candidacy for the czar post and past ties to Montes as “incorrect.”

Before being asked by the White House, “I am sure they checked my credentials and the record indicated I was an American who had served both Republicans and Democrats,” Gen. Sheehan said. “Deal with the issue at hand on an objective basis, not character defamation.”

The Washington Times’ selection smear job against Sheehan conveniently omits the fact that a key administration ally and escalation proponent, Gen. Jack Keane, also turned down the post.

Is it possible that Dick Cheney — who has a history of smearing people who speak out against him — was peddling information to the Washington Times as vindictive payback against Sheehan?

In Thursday’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted that in Nov. 2006, he approved the firings of several U.S. attorneys “without ever looking at [their] performance reports.” He also admitted that at the time, he didn’t even know why two of the prosecutors — Daniel Bogden in Nevada and Margaret Chiara in Michigan — were on the hit list.

At the hearing, Gonzales told Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) that he later learned Chiara’s office suffered from “poor management issues” and a “loss of confidence by career individuals,” which justified the firing:

BROWNBACK: Margaret Chiara, the Western District of Michigan?

GONZALES: Same issue. She’s the other person, quite candidly, Senator, that I don’t recall remembering — I don’t recall the reason why that I accepted the decision on December 7th. But I’ve since learned that it was a question of similar kinds of issues: poor management issues, loss of confidence by career individuals.

We had to send someone out from main Justice to help mediate some kind of personnel dispute. So it was a question simply of someone not having total control of the office.

Gonzales’s explanation seems to be nothing more than a false excuse. Four top staffers to Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, recently voluntarily demoted themselves in protest of Paulose’s “highly dictatorial style” of managing. According to news reports, the staffers’ dramatic moves were “intended to send a message to Washington — that 33-year-old Paulose is in over her head.” Additionally, the Bush administration unsuccessfully tried to prevent the resignations by sending a “top justice official to Minneapolis” to mediate.

Yet Justice Department has not fired Paulose, even though her office has the same problems that Gonzales said Chiara’s office suffered. Instead, it put out a statement of support, stating it was “confident” Paulose was “dedicated to leading an effective U.S. attorneys office in Minnesota.”

A look at Paulose’s background may explain why she is still in her job. A Bush administration loyalist, Paulose was “a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called Gonzales’s explanations “a stretch,” adding that he thought the prosecutors were fired because of “made up reasons.”

Everyone’s already piling on Maureen Dowd’s horrible column today, but to me what makes this sort of crap doubly aggravating is her refusal to even take responsibility for what she’s doing. Dowd doesn’t want to wake up and say, “I’m using my New York Times column to argue that John Edwards would be a bad president because he got some expensive haircuts.” She won’t come out and write: “John Edwards’ expensive haircuts indicate to me that he would be a bad president.” If she wrote that, after all, it would be obvious that she was being idiotic. Why, after all, would you think that the price of Edwards’ haircuts is an important indicator of what kind of job he’d do as president.

So, instead, she writes a column which is nominally about how other people will find his haircuts objectionable. The voters — not Dowd, Dowd is serious — will find this very damaging. But, of course, it wouldn’t be damaging at all if media haters didn’t talk about it. It’s either relevant or it’s not. If you think it’s relevant, you have a responsibility to explain how and why and expose yourself as a fool. If you don’t think it’s relevant, you have a responsibility to write your columns about something else.