The three internal Justice Department investigations into political influence and hiring and firing practices are complete. The final probe, looking into the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys, including Carol Lam of San Diego, was released this week. It should anger any American concerned with the fair administration of the law.

Saddled with a variety of seemingly intractable problems, California's criminal justice system is a deeply frustrating mess. Among the groups upset with this mess are those who think the state's initiative-driven tough-on-crime approach is overly punitive of drug offenders and should instead focus on their rehabilitation.

Californians' appetite for tough-on-crime initiatives may have been justified in some cases because of lawmakers' dithering and judges' leniency. But after decades of such measures, the fiscal strain created by this approach is massive and inescapable. State and county jails hold more than a quarter-million inmates at a cost of more than $1 billion a month. The tab is expected to be far higher in coming years, thanks to an $8 billion construction tab for new prisons ordered by federal courts.

This week many Americans were presented with more incontrovertible evidence that while our financial system may be on the fritz, our political system is just plain broken. It was not surprising that the stock market cascaded nearly 800 points in a single day after the House of Representatives failed to approve a $700 billion bailout package.