What does the USA have in common with the Ukraine?

Answer: shady voting practices.

How do they differ?

Answer: they have a supreme court that is willing to take the issue seriously.

This is pretty awesome... it really does my heart good to see some ol' fashioned democratic moves get played out in the face of an outside regime that wants anything but a fair fight.

Commentary on this topic around the blogs I frequent seem to be limited to making dark jokes about the irony of the United States criticizing anyone about their electoral process, and the news stories I have seen have been focused on providing information on the evolving situation without much in-depth analysis. As such, it seems that one of the most interesting subplots of this whole situation has been going relatively unnoticed: a possible fracture of the Putin and Dubya’s cozy relationship. (An exception to this observation would be this article)

Most news stories have at least taken the time to mention that Yushchenko is the “pro-West” candidate and Yanukovych is the “pro-Russia” candidate, and others have noted the great importance of the Ukraine to Russia in a historical sense as well as their current economic and military designs… it’s powerful stuff, and many experts don’t think Putin can afford to back down here. The recent developments are really setting the stage for something big.

Update: More doings in the Ukraine... I don't think this is as big a deal as the press is making it out to be; the spotlight is shining and that alone will make things difficult. Also, I don't really agree with changing elections lawa during an electoral process, but I'm not terribly hard and fast on that...