John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter recently proposed that the U.S. create an organization made up of the world's liberal democracies, "Concert of Democracies," that would serve as a souce of legitimacy for the use of force outside of the United Nations. In a recent TPM Cafe piece, New America's Michael Lind argues this would serve only to allow a hawkish U.S. President to get weak states to rubber-stamp an unpopular was such as in Iran.

DEPARTMENT OF MOON HOWLING: The Las Vegas Review & Journal takes a long look at one of the country's more important signature firms, National Voter Outreach and its CEO Rick Arnold. I've interviewed Arnold in his Carson City home, and found him to be one of the more thoughtful people in the petition trade, critical of its problems and clear-eyed about its limitations. This story is built heavily around criticism from the liberal/progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which is quick to lable signature gathering as corrupt (at least in cases where it opposes the cause in question). There is a "shocked, shocked" quality to this criticism. The signature gathering business has plenty of problem workers, many of them poorly trained folks who, for lifestyle reasons, have taken a job that usually pays them in cash. But BISC and other critics invariably propopse to criminalize the process of gathering signatures, as in Oklahoma. In supporting these restrictions, liberals are hurting themselves, by establishing precedents restricting political speech that can be used by their political opponents. And such restrictions don't stop direct democracy. They merely slow it down, adding to the costs (and thus the influence of interest groups) that progressives love to denounce. The more you regulate, the more firms like National Voter Outreach will benefit.

YUSHCHENKO PLEDGES VOTE: Ukraine's president says the country will hold a popular referendum on joining NATO within two years.

CAYMANS VOTE: The Cayman Islands are moving towards its first ever popular referendum, a vote the prime minister wants on his proposals for a "modernized" constitution. This story from the Caymanian Compass, a national newspaper there, says the referendum may include more than one question.

SCOTS ON THEIR OWN: Scots want to vote on independence, a new poll says.

ISRAELI VOTE? The Israeli Knesset debates the wisdom of holding a public referendum on territorial concessions.

SOLVING PAKISTAN'S CRISIS: How to restore those Pakistani judges deposed by Musharraf? Former parliamentarian Haji Saifullah Khan suggests a popular referendum might solve the problem -- and give the judiciary new public legitimacy.