An interesting essay about political plagiarism from Sunday's Week in Review.

Tonight's Republican debate was phenomenal. Sadly, MSNBC is being as draconian about the footage of this one as they were about the footage of the Democrats' debate a week ago, so if you missed it, you're probably out of luck. But be sure to check out Wonkette's liveblog (Part I, Part II). It's terrific.

Update: The Daily Show's coverage (aired on May 7) is also excellent.

If you have a few free minutes, I'd highly recommend Wonkette's liveblog of tonight's debate (Part I, Part II).

The pros and cons of the top twenty Democratic presidential candidates, courtesy of regular McSweeney's contributor John Moe.

I tend to be pretty skeptical of the the whole "cost of a gallon of milk" question (mostly because, despite the fact that I buy milk at least once a week, I couldn't answer the question myself), so I've been glad to see that a lot of the response to Giuliani's recent bungling has been along those same lines. The best response I've seen, though, is definitely this one, in which Michael Tomasky suggests replacing the fairly arbitrary "price of milk" with a list of ten numbers that really would demonstrate political in-touchitude.

The guests for tomorrow's talk shows, according to my TiVo:

Meet the Press: Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. David Vitter

Face the Nation: Sen. Jim Webb, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Arlen Specter

This Week: Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Dick Lugar, Re. Duncan Hunter, Kevin Bacon

One of these things is not like the others.

An interesting (if not particularly unique) look at the relative earliness of the start of the '08 presidential campaign. (Also worth visiting every few hours: the NYT's running tally of announced candidates.)

ThinkProgress thinks - or at least thought on Friday, thanks to a blurb in the White House Bulletin - that Karl Rove plans to resign in the very immediate future. I'll be awfully surprised if that actually comes to pass, but stranger things have certainly happened. (For instance, Sylvester Stallone talked some studio into doing another Rocky movie.)

Best. Concession speech. Ever.

(And this is a guy who got 36% of the vote!)

Sunday's New York Times Book Review features an excellent 4,000-word essay on democracy by Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley. Highly recommended.

(Playing catch-up, as usual.) From Tuesday's New York Times comes a report on perhaps the most honorable man in politics.

[Kevin] Wiskus is a 42-year-old Iowa farmer and lifelong Republican from the town of Centerville, about 100 miles south of the capital, who is making his first run for public office for a [state] House seat.

He became so outraged by his own party’s efforts to elect him that he resigned last month in protest.

A mailing sent by the state committee told voters that Mr. Wiskus’s* Democratic opponent, a lawyer named Kurt Swaim, had defended a man charged with child molesting.

Mr. Wiskus knew that Mr. Swaim had been assigned the case by the court as a public defender, and decided the attack was unconscionable. He is now an independent, and said he would serve as an independent if elected.

The fact that such a modest display of professional decency passes for show-stopping political integrity doesn't exactly swell one's heart with pride. But in an age of utterly misleading attack ads ("My opponent voted ninety-four times to raise your taxes and steal body armor from The Troops!"), if Mr. Wiskus sticks to his word, I'll be impressed.

* - Do you suppose the Wiskus family has a cat? And if so, do you suppose he is legally obligated to be called Mr. Whiskers Wiskus?

Anxious for the chance to disabuse someone of their Republicanism (or, if you must, Democratism), but don't know any good Republicans to practice on? RedBlue has the answer!

RedBlue will create a private, one-on-one online dialogue process by matching participants with contrasting views. "Counterparts" will learn about the ground rules of productive dialogue, then engage on a difficult issue by viewing or reading a fictional narrative scenario that frames a front-page issue in personal, rather than theoretical, terms. Their email-style discussion will be monitored by a "virtual facilitator" that will make suggestions, provide feedback, and offer to step in when the heat of the moment threatens to derail the civility of the dialogue.

The site's not fully active yet, but if you sign up, they'll send you an email when it's all ready to go. I'm quite looking forward to it.

About a month ago, I gave some thought to running a 2006 version of my wildly popular (ahem) 2004 election pool. An utter lack of interest on the part of approximately 97% of the 2004 participants, however, led me to dismiss the idea. But good news for the remaining three percent: there are other places to turn.

• Fantasy Congress. Build and manage a team of Congressmen, just like fantasy [baseball, football, golf, curling...]. A piece of hard-won advice: don't draft Sen. Mike Vick in the first round. Sure, he can run, but he can't throw for shit, and he's always injured. Trust me. (And thanks to a well-placed article in the New York Times, there'll be no shortage of new leagues for the next few months, so join away.)
• Midterm Madness. The Washington Post lets Capitolheads go hog-wild, allowing users to pick the winner of each of the year's 468 Congressional races. Top prize, nationwide: $100. (Could you tighten the purse strings a little, there, Post?)