@Steve Marlowe: With money being no object then I'd say either Final Cut Express / Final Cut Studio or potentially the fastest being Adobe Premiere Pro as it can edit raw AVCHD files without conversion I believe. This does of course require a pretty fast and powerful machine to do so I think!

Although Final Cut apps convert AVCHD to Apple Pro Res / Intermediate Codec formats the benefit is that these formats are easier to edit on less powerful systems.

But if money is no object then Premiere Pro and also a big Apple Mac Pro will probably be pretty good!!!