Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

It turns out that we have long been a nation of Electoral College "dropouts"; according to the folks at Gallup, a majority of Americans has consistently favored a popular-vote decision for the past 50 years.

This sentiment makes perfect sense, considering all the ways that the archaic Electoral College — devised by the Founding Fathers partly as a sop to Southern slaveholders — undercuts the core tenants of democracy. It essentially disenfranchises millions of voters, depresses voter turnout, favors the small states at the expense of the populous states, and has, on four occasions, handed the presidency to the guy who got fewer votes than his opponent.

Foreigners can’t fathom why we cling to this institution. Last year, two visiting radio journalists from Singapore asked me, "Why doesn’t America simply give the presidency to the person who gets the most votes?" I was barely able to explain how the Electoral College works, much less defend it. I did manage to point out that the electors were originally intended to be enlightened people who could vote in the national interest, whereas the average citizen in a dispersed agrarian society was thought to have insufficient information - but that concept clearly has no relevence today, given the fact that the average citizen, if so inclined, can study a candidate's issue agenda simply by powering up a cellphone.

Yet the Electoral College, a remnant of the powdered-wig era, endures.

-- DICK POLMAN

A lot of people got very worked up when George Bush fired some US Attorneys for political reasons. Now some of those same people are exercised over the refusal of a Bush-appointed US Attorney to resign so that Obama can replace her.

-- PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE

Well, nobody's perfect. Given that John McCain's economic team was headlined by Carly Fiorina and Joe the Plumber, the country would be dodging a fiscal bullet even if Obama had picked Suze Orman. But I keep wondering why the honeymoon hagiography about the best and the brightest has been so over the top. Washington's cheerleading for our new New Frontier cabinet superstars has seldom been interrupted by tough questions about Summers's Harvard career or Geithner's record at the Fed. For that, it’s best to turn to the business press . . .

No doubt the Pavlovian ovations for the Obama team are in part a reaction to our immediate political past. After eight years of a presidency that valued cronyism over brains (or even competence) and embraced an anti-intellectualism apotheosized by Sarah Palin, it’s a godsend to have a president who puts a premium on merit. I also wonder if a press corps that underrated Obama's political prowess for much of the campaign, demeaning him as a professorial wuss next to the brawny Clinton and McCain, is now overcompensating for that mistake. No one wants to miss out a second time on triumphal history in the making.

-- FRANK RICH

People on the left are not looking at Obama's appointments with a jaundiced eye because they think he needs to apply some liberal orthodoxy litmus test. They have legitimate concerns that people like Geitner, Summers and other Rubin acolytes created this mess, and it’s reasonable to ask why they're being appointed to get us out of it.

-- JANE HAMSHER

[T]he media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations — "Islamic terrorists," "Muslim extremists" -- and by the time of the assault on Bombay found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators "militants" or "gunmen" or "teenage gunmen," as in the opening line of this report in the Australian: "An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok . . . "

Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.

-- MARK STEYN

Teddy Kennedy's announcement that he is stepping down from his high-ranking position on the Judiciary Committee so that he can concentrate all his efforts on health care is the strongest signal yet that we're going to get some form of universal health care bill passed next year.

Imagine Barack Obama signing a universal health care bill in his first year . . . something that no one could accomplish over fifty years of trying.

-- BOOMAN

Given all of the obstacles to bringing a successful prosecution, it's remarkable that DOJ has indicted those five former Blackwater guards for their roles in the Nisour Square massacre. But one thing in particular is going under-reported in the coverage: In the hours immediately after the shootings, the State Department, who contracted with Blackwater, gave legal immunity to all of the Blackwater guards who were at the scene of the alleged crime in return for their accounts of the incident.

. . . DOJ is going to have fun overcoming that hurdle, having to demonstrate that the evidence they gathered for the indictment and prosecution was not fruit of that poison tree.

-- DAVID KURTZ

The Supreme Court has denied the first of the cases to reach it alleging that Barack Obama is ineligible to serve as President. This isn’t the end of this nonsense, but it’s the beginning of the end, at least for the sane and rational among us.

-- DOUG MATACONIS

President Bush's future neighborhood, the wealthy Dallas area called Preston Hollow, has some unfortunate secrets:

Until 2000, the neighborhood association's covenant said only white people were allowed to live there, though an exception was made for servants.

Enacted in 1956, part of the original document reads: "Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons except those shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant."

I'll add this thought. The president bought his ranch in Crawford just before running for president and is moving to a swanky suburban neighborhood just after leaving office. It's almost like his cowboy image was an affect cultivated for maximum political gain. Imagine that.

-- JONATHAN STEIN