I'm not a big fan of the electoral college system, but this article doesn't make me feel better about amending it.

The New Yorker:

At first glance, next year's Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.

Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California's electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes-votes that it wouldn't get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.

If you haven't seen it already, take a look at the video "Hacking Democracy". (h/t Todd for link)

Conservative heads continue to explode over the rescheduled GOP CNN/YouTube debate. One conservative's predictable solution to managing the direct participation of American voters? Let right-wing bloggers choose the questions.

Meanwhile, the 2008 GOP presidential field offers Americans a unified theory of Islamic terrorism which dangerously conflates all enemies, real or imagined. Of course, Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee et al are merely plagiarizing from the master.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki is at loggerheads with General Petraeus for arming Sunni militants backed by Saudi Arabia, now the proposed recipient of a massive new U.S. arms package. And that was just Sunday.

Back in DC, data mining may be at the center of Alberto Gonzales' latest prevarications over illegal NSA domestic surveillance. While the National Review debates itself over his controlling legal authority, Fox News can't find any takers to defend Gonzo.

An evangelical civil war has broken out over creating a Palestinian state and fast-tracking the End of Days. And while Joe Lieberman compares Pastor John Hagee to Moses, Robert Novak dreams of an afterlife without bloggers.

And as a shaky Wall Street seeks to rebound from last week's disaster, Brad Delong and Mark Thoma offer David Brooks an economics lesson.

Guest blogging the Round Up this week is Jon Perr from Perrspectives. Send your links, recommendations, comments and angst to mbr AT perrspectives DOT com.

2 Political Junkies:  Okay, I'll ask:  why doesn't every state have a PA House Bill 288 providing emergency contraception to RAPE victims?   And the Democratic Congress is no help .

Monkey Muck:  Shows us the "good" versus "bad" lawyer-types in the Civil Rights Division at (ahem) Justice.

The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood:  Barack Obama, Do the Right Thing.

Senate 2008 Guru:  good resource blog on all the upcoming US Senate races...

Off the Beaten Path, "Al Gore's way cool blogger friends" edition:  Libs Earth Watch,  The Good Human, Celsias, The Conscious Earth , Climate Change Action.

Guest round up by Blue Gal

[Next week's round-ups by Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar. batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com]

The Politico:

The Macaca moment has morphed into an official learning tool for the Republican establishment.

It's right there, on pages 18 and 22 of an Internet guide from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that its chairman, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), hopes will become scripture for the 2008 candidates.

Always assume you're being recorded, and always record your opponent. The blogs -- oh, scratch that -- the Republican blogs are your friends, so use them for rapid response in good times and bad.

"The paradigmatic example of failure to do so is the 'macaca' moment," reads the guidebook (excerpted here), referring to a remark last year by former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) that was captured on video and sunk his reelection campaign.

And btw, the mainstream media are so, uh, 2006. The first stop for press secretaries, according to the guidebook, should be bloggers who can create "buzz" and inevitably trigger stories in the drippy MSM.

You'll never guess which are the top 5 bloggers to which to go for those Republicans... oh wait, it's probably obvious.

The Agonist:

Wall Street Journal - An increasingly gloomy political environment has soured Americans on President Bush and Congress, scrambled the Republicans' 2008 field, and strengthened Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

As the Iraq war drags on and Washington is embroiled in inconclusive policy debates, just 19% of Americans now say the nation is head in the right direction. More than three times that proportion, 68%, say things in the U.S. are "off on the wrong track." That's approaching the most pessimistic mood in the history of the WSJ/NBC poll.

At the same time, Mr. Bush's job approval rating has fallen to his lowest-ever level of 29%, while 66% disapprove his handling of the presidency. The telephone survey of 1,008 adults, conducted June 8 to 11 by Republican pollster Neil Newhouse and his Democratic counterpart Peter Hart, carries a margin for error of 3.1 percentage points.

The fallout from that bleak mood affects the Democratic-controlled Congress as well as the Republican president. Just 23% of Americans approve the performance of Congress, matching the finding of the Journal/NBC poll from one year ago as the Republicans then holding House and Senate majorities headed toward defeat in November mid-term elections.

Wonder what those numbers for Congress would look like if they had managed to vote against the Iraq Supplemental and get that No Confidence vote for Alberto Gonzales through.

Daily Darfur: Activists pressuring China, host of the 2008 Olympics, as they are "not only the premier supplier of weapons to Khartoum regime, [they have] provided unstinting support to the Sudanese government." Um, you mean, like our very own CIA?

Not clicking on those links, folks? Hey, even kids know Darfur doesn't sell.

PBH blog: Michelle Malkin, American Brain Trust.

Connecting the Dots: Dan Rather is depleting the good-will balance in his Journalistic Hall of Fame account.

Holy Crap! A Christian and an atheist have a civil conversation. But wait, that's happening all the time at Blog against Theocracy. And a holy crap classic for Father's Day: Ian Frazier's The Lamentations of the Father.

guest round-up by Blue Gal

FaBlog:  A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Sensen no sen:  Save your outrage for those who need it....

DC's:  Don't tell the manager of the Whole Foods on the Bowery that we used to sleep where the olive bar is now....

Words of Power:  The long hot summer of reason or madness?

Holy Crap!  Didja know there's a sleezy side to the abstinence industry?  h/t to the amazing writers at The Revealer.  God, Gays, and the sanctity of marriage . 

Between 20 March 2007 and 20 March 2008 (the fifth year of the war)  this group will work to sign up One Million Blogs for Peace.

Guest round up by Blue Gal, bluegalsblog AT gmail DOT com.

The Newshoggers: BU$HCO'S weapons of mass distraction. But this story is scarier

First Draft: Experts warn that a national security crisis looms for the 2009 administration transition because the Department of Homeland Security is so heavily stacked with political appointees

The Terrorist's Dictionary: The Pentagon multi-billion-dollar project to defeat IEDs ("Joint IED Defeat Organization") says they are "weapons of strategic influence."

The Kingsland Report: Rupert Murdoch of Newscorp fame maybe be about to be chewed up and spit out by the Bancroft family of Wall Street Journal fame. There's a lot of cockiness to this Murdoch takeover attempt of Dow Jones. I'm not so sure it's a foregone conclusion

IraqSlogger: Forced labor building our new Baghdad embassy?

HOLY CRAP: Fired McCain religion-outreach aides say they were ignored..."Pray for rain", urges Aussie Prime Minister...Moses didn't write about creation...Virginia Christian teachers want constitutional protection limited to them...U.S. a theocratic state, says former Canadian ambassador...A recent study on how much MSM coverage is devoted to religion and who gets to talk...More fun with Fundies and sodomy...The Pope and Islam...Televangelist compares Romney to Satan...Atheists arise! Cartoonists are making fun of you!...Religion and politics loom large in 2008 race...

Via Raw Story:

With the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2008 shunning a presidential primary debate sponsored by Fox News and a thinktank associated with the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel have announced their readiness to stand in a controversial spotlight.[..]

Rep. Kucinich, known primarily for his push to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney and his strong anti-war position, criticized his opponents who were unwilling to show up to the CBC/Fox debate. Read more...

Pretty disappointing to see Kucinich completely missing the point of why others declined to go on the Fox debate. James Rucker explains why Kucinich with his calling out the other candidates undermines black voters and supports Fox.

How deeply disappointing that we couldn't get enough of a majority on the committee to stand up for a basic right granted to us since the Magna Carte.

The Hill:

The new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee dealt a blow to the human-rights community by failing to include provisions to overhaul GOP legislation governing military tribunals in the 2008 defense authorization bill.[..]

Skelton said he has prepared separate legislation and is planning to work with Democratic leadership, the Judiciary Committee and members of the Armed Services panel to bring a stand-alone bill to the floor. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is supporting Skelton's efforts to move forward with a stand-alone bill, according to a Pelosi aide.

Concerns over a potential presidential veto of the defense authorization bill - which contains critical policies for the Pentagon - as well as a partisan split in the committee prompted Skelton to leave it to Democratic leadership to take up the issue. Congress has passed a defense authorization bill every year for the last 47 years.