AP:

The Justice Department ordered House officials to "preserve all records" related to disgraced Rep. Mark Foley's [R-Neverland] electronic correspondence with teenagers, intensifying an investigation into a scandal rocking Republicans five weeks before midterm elections.

Um, isn't it a little late to preserve the records? When I called Foley's district offices on Tuesday, the computers were still running, so I'm assuming they hadn't been sealed.

I'm going to propose a new unit of measurement, along the lines of Atrios's The Friedman (six months 'til everybody in Iraq gets a pony? Then everybody would stop shovelling after 1 Friedman has elapsed).

That unit [snicker] is The Gonzales Number. Read on:

The Gonzales number is one over the number of elapsed days from the time when the need for an investigation is obvious to everyone, and the time when the order to seal records is issued.

For example, in The Plame Affair, the White House had one day, 24 hours, and therefore The Gonzales Number for The Plame Affair would be 1.

By contrast, the Foley Affair erm, erupted what, four days ago? So, 1 over 4 is 1/4 is 0.25.

Plame was therefore 4 times more important to the Executive Branch of what we laughingly still call our "government" than Foley is.

Which makes intuitive sense: In Plame, Rove would have ended up making license plates; but Foley? Some Congressman. Who's gay. It must have been an easy call.

We hope this modest contribution to the science of politics will prove useful.