I don’t have any rants or speculation ready for today, so I’ll give you all a few links to read over.

• The Legislature is considering LB 476, Ernie Chambers’ annual bill to repeal the death penalty. Remarkably, though, the debate seems to be fair, honest, and open. A rarity, indeed. UPDATE: The bill failed to advance by one vote, 24 in favor, 25 opposed. I’ve got to hand it to the legislature, though, this is a difficult issue, and they handled it honestly and allowed a vote on it without bitter attacks or political games. I’m sure Chambers will try again next year, his last year in the unicameral. As always, Paging Power has all the unicameral coverage.
• The U.S. Attorneys scandal is spiraling out of control for the administration. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is likely on his way out, but this scandal goes beyond the Justice Department. Now comes news that the administration wanted to fire Patrick Fitzgerald - the special prosecutor for the Scooter Libby trial. Of course, that would have been incredibly hard to justify, as Fitzgerald received high praise for his skill as a prosecutor. As always, TPM and its sister site TPM Muckracker has an amazing amount of information on this case.
• Another in a line of blatantly offensive Barack Obama articles.
• Adam Conner has a great analysis at MyDD of a viral “1984″ pro-Obama/anti-Hillary YouTube ad. Even the generally pompous Joe Klein of Time Magazine has a good insight: “It’s increasingly apparent that the Great Divide in 2008 isn’t black v. white, or male v. female, but young v. old.”
• Kyle has a good catch here: Jeff Fortenberry defends Nelnet’s highway robbery. Make no mistake - it’s corporations like this that are responsible for the massive amount of student debt in this country, and the fact that they’re allowed to get away with outright fraud is just despicable.
• Bong Hits 4 Jesus! - arguments before the Supreme Court in a hilarious free speech case.
• UPDATE: The City Council approved new district boundaries today. From the sound of it, NoDo will continue to be in District 2, Frank Brown’s district. The rest of the plan sounds like it will be the same as the original plan drawn up a few months ago and released to the public last month. As soon as we get an actual map of the districts, we’ll see what it looks like. If LB 405 passes, we’ll have to see the districts redrawn again, presumably moving districts 1, 2, 3, and 4 back further east.