Today MySpace and MTV announced the details of the presidential candidate forums they will hold this fall. Hosted on college campuses across the country, broadcast on MTV and streamed live on MySpace, the forums seek to foster “candid, unfiltered” discussions between young voters and the major Republican and Democratic candidates.

As I write in an identical blog post at HuffPo, the blogosphere seems abuzz with optimism about the forums, the latest evidence that 2008 won’t be your mother and father’s election. “MTV and MySpace have hit up an interactive format with the potential to pioneer a whole new way of doing candidate debates/forums,” writes Michael Connery, co-founder of Future Majority, a prominent blog with well-done reporting on progressive youth politics. (Yes, that Mike Connery who came at Campus Progress back in June.)

Jim D commented earlier that today was the day we’ve all been waiting: the day the U.S. News and World Report rankings come out. Well I’m tired of this shit. Not because I’m tired of Yale always being No. 3. Not because I’m tired of watching helicopter parents drive their children to anxiety overload. I’m sick of the rankings undermining American competitiveness by incentivizing institutional behavior that privileges the privileged, undermines equality and fairness, and diverts schools’ priorities from educating students to fudging figures. Am I just ranting here? Maybe. But I try to back it up with some more meat in my op-ed on the Huffington Post today. Check it out. Beef up the comments section at HuffPo with some CP love.

By the way Jim, IvyGate's trying to get in Lee Bollinger's pants.