On one hand, we have Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton, one the one-time lawyer for the President of the United States and the other the former White House Chief of Staff. Both of them were allegedly involved in the White House’s firing of U.S. Attorneys who weren’t willing to follow along with efforts to discredit or damage Democratic politicians in their districts, and both ignored Congressional subpoenas to provide documents and testify about the dismissals.

On the other hand, we have Roger Clemens, the baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros, and New York Yankees. He was allegedly a user of performance-enhancing drugs during much of his baseball career, and gave testimony before a Congressional inquiry into the use of drugs in sports which was directly contradicted by his former trainer.

In what can be said to be one of the most poignant statements about what’s wrong with politics and justice in America, the Department of Justice has agreed to investigate whether Roger Clemens lied to Congress, but has refused to investigate Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton for not complying with Congressional subpoenas. The fact that our Executive Branch isn’t wiling to hold its own people responsible for abiding by the law is abhorrent; the fact that this is all taking place alongside the same Executive Branch spending its time on the private behavior of athletes competing in games is just the icing on the proverbial cake.

I gotta say, this idea — a professor intentionally introducing a single falsehood into each of his lectures, challenging the class to find it and expose it — is pretty great for a slew of reasons. Given a sufficiently dedicated group of students (e.g., students who chose the class for a purpose, rather than those who were forced to take the class to fulfill an otherwise-meaningless requirement), it gets the class thinking about the material with a more critical mindset, it exposes areas of the material with unnecessary or unexplained ambiguity, and it serves to reinforce the fact that no teacher should be immune to having his or her lessons challenged by students.

Very smart.

Bill Simmons, ESPN’s Sports Guy and possibly the biggest Boston sports homer in the world, found himself at this year’s Super Bowl without his lucky Wes Welker jersey. He grabbed a Randy Moss jersey from the vendors inside the stadium, put it on, and proceeded to watch the Pats get stunningly upset by the Giants; after that, he went home, threw the jersey away, but then thought twice about it and decided to auction the jersey off for charity. So now, you can head over to eBay and bid, with all proceeds (literally, 100%) going to the Jimmy Fund! Having worked at the Jimmy Fund clinic for three years, I can dig the sentiment, and hope that the eventual winner of the auction follows through with the donation — I like how Simmons put it in the auction listing:

Note: A warning to anyone thinking of bidding this auction up without any intention of paying the final fee: This is for charity, we’re raising money for cancer research, and you would be guaranteeing yourself a lifetime of bad karma if you ruined this auction in any way. Go on the Jimmy Fund’s website, read about the kids they’re trying to help, and tell me how it would possibly be a good thing to sabotage this auction. Hopefully, we can raise some money for cancer research and reverse the bad karma that this jersey has wrought on the Patriots franchise. Once you get the jersey, I don’t care what you do with it - you can wear it, you can burn it, you can bury it in your backyard. I don’t care. I never want to see it again.

Tomorrow’s Chesapeake Primary day, the day when DC, Virginia, and Maryland voters turn out to help choose the next Presidential candidates — and with the tight race on the Democratic Party side, the primaries really matter quite a bit. Here in the District, 15 delegates will be allocated based on the primary results, as many as Delaware, Vermont, Alaska, and either of the Dakotas, which is sort of exciting for us here normally-unrepresented folks. Given that, though, wouldn’t you think that there would be even one small tidbit of information about the election on the Washington, D.C. homepage? Alas, there isn’t; you have to head over to the DC Board of Elections subsite, and if what you’re really after is the location of your polling place, head here to track that info down.

Hallelujah, the SuperDuper update to bring Leopard compatibility is now out! (For those who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, or who might know and don’t use it, SuperDuper is by far the best backup app for Macs. And since Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, was released, SuperDuper didn’t work with it, leaving some of us without our backup method of choice.)