YOU KNOW, LIKE THAT SPECIAL ELECTION WE HAD IN '74 AFTER NIXON RESIGNED?

Don't like the results of an election? Nullify it and rewrite the election laws:

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) called on Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska ) Thursday to step down from his seat and run in a special election in the wake of the Justice Department's decision to drop corruption charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Begich narrowly defeated Stevens in 2008, a contest overshadowed by Stevens' October conviction....

Um, you know what, Governor? In this country -- as opposed to a banana republic -- we don't throw out existing procedures for filling public offices whenever we feel like it, not even when the legal system suggests that an earlier outcome was based on incomplete information. George McGovern didn't get to run again in a special election after Nixon resigned; we had a constitutional succession process and we used it. Judy Baar Topinka didn't get an instant do-over even when the guy who beat her in the 2006 Illinois governor's race, Rod Blagojevich, was forced from office -- Illinois elevated the lieutenant governor, as its laws require. And as John Cole notes, what about Gary Condit?

I'm not shrugging this off. The howler monkeys of the right really might press this case until it seems, y'know, reasonable. And if they succeed, we really will be one step closer to becoming a banana republic.