MORNING READ

The Republican congressional campaign committees are in a heap of electoral, legal and financial trouble, according to bloggers on both sides. New polls give both Barack Obama and John McCain reasons to be more optimistic than pundits suggest, bloggers writes. And the Supreme Court ruling allowing Guantanamo Bay detainees to argue their cases in civilian courts has further split Democrats, Republicans and bloggers.

The report that the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) had $725,000 taken by a former employee and must now submit to a stricter accounting procedures doesn’t bode well for House Republicans, who will now have trouble borrowing money to compete with Democrats this year, kos writes. In the race for the Senate, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has revised his worst-case target of 41 seats for Republicans to 45 seats, a low number that’s evidence of how bad things are for Republicans this year, writes MyDD’s Todd Beeton. Ensign, who has blamed paltry fundraising on “bad” donor mailing lists, should forget about campaign strategy and technology, and instead focusing on returning to the conservative policies of Ronald Reagan, according to Matthew Sheffield on The Next Right.

Despite the long Democratic nomination tussle, a new Hotline/Diageo poll shows that 68 percent of Democrats are satisfied with Obama as their nominee while just 52 percent of Republicans are happy with McCain, notes Eric Kleefeld at TPM Election Central. But McCain does better than Obama in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll among white voters, always a key demographic, and the Republican trails by six percentage points among registered voters, a gap that should close in surveys of likely voters, writes RedState’s Pejman Yousefzadeh.

The Supreme Court has correctly reversed two laws limiting detainees’ court rights, and any member who heeds Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call for a constitutional amendment risks earning another “moral stain,” writes mcjoan at Daily Kos. But according to Power Line’s Scott Johnson, the court decision is a vast expansion of judicial wartime powers, benefits foreign terrorists, and leaves open the option for the United States to send terror suspects to other countries for detention.

FROM THE BLOGS:
Fallout From NRCC Embezzlement – kos, Daily Kos
Sen. Ensign Revises GOP Hopes… to 45 Seats – Todd Beeton, MyDD
Ensign: Bad Mailing Lists? – Matthew Sheffield, The Next Right
Dems Satisfied W/ Nominee, Repubs Aren’t – Kleefeld, TPM Elect.
Seems Awfully Close For A Landslide – P. Yousefzadeh, RedState
Obama Should’ve Picked Me To Econ Team – Dean Baker, TPMCafe
Cusack’s Savage Satire Strikes Chord – A. Huffington, HuffPo
Right’s Institutions Need To Talk To Country – S. Dayton, Next Right
The Case For A McCain Flip-Flop – Kathryn Jean Lopez, The Corner
Countrywide Loans For More Obama Backers – M. Lane, RedState
Morally Bankrupt: Sen. Graham and Detainees – mcjoan, Daily Kos
Boumediene The Day After – Scott Johnson, Power Line
Obama Fighting Smears Selectively – John Hinderaker, Power Line

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:
Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal In Civilian Court – NYT
Administration Strategy For Detentions Now In Disarray – Wash. Post
McCain and Obama Split On Guantanamo Bay Ruling – New York Times
Earmark Spending Makes A Comeback – Washington Post