In what is being called a devastating defeat for a coalition of parties that have held power in Japan since 1955, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the country's upper house of parliament in elections yesterday. Exit polls and early results showed the party losing about 30 seats in the 242-seat chamber, leaving them short of a majority, while the Democratic Party of Japan picked up nearly 20 seats. Abe, who as Prime Minister is elected by the lower chamber, has vowed not to quit, though some Japanese newspapers are calling on him to step down.

Japan isn't the only nation that's seen widespread electoral change over the last two years. In 2006, Canada voted out Paul Martin's Democrats in favor of fresh-faced conservative Stephen Harper, and Portugal elected a conservative to take over for a socialist president. Chile elected Socialist Michelle Bachelet instead of the ruling Christian Democrats, while Hamas upset Fatah in Palestinian Authority elections. Mexico's ruling PAN narrowly avoided defeat when Felipe Calderon edged out PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by just over one half of one percent. In 2005, Germany's Christian Democratic Union beat out the Socialist Party's Gerhard Schroder. And, of course, Republicans in the U.S. lost control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

So, as new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown meets with President Bush today at Camp David, having taken over British presence in an unpopular war and distancing himself from his predecessor, Tony Blair, Brown may consider his own fate uncertain in the next British elections. Many have speculated that Brown will use his widespread honeymoon popularity to call snap elections in the fall.

A recent poll, conducted online (we remain skeptical of online polls) by the Daily Telegraph, showed Brown's Labour Party leading with 41% of the vote to 32% for Conservatives, headed by embattled newcomer David Cameron, and 16% for the centrist Liberal Democrats. If those results held, it would give Brown twice the majority he has now.

But, if Japan, Mexico, Canada, Germany and others are any indication, Brown may want to think twice before putting his party in front of any voters before he absolutely must.

Meanwhile, back home in Washington, Congress today begins its sprint toward August recess. We reported last week that Senate Democrats would try and pass four pieces of major legislation. After passing the Homeland Security appropriations bill and the September 11th Commission recommendations, they still have a lot of work to finish.

The Senate today is beginning work on SCHIP reauthorization, which, after parliamentary wrangling in the House last week, faces the Rules Committee before it can head to the floor. Later in the week, the Senate will take up ethics and lobbying reform. Both bills are expected to pass (sub req'd), giving Democrats something to respond with when confronted with charges of a do-nothing Congress when they go home in August.

Republicans will not fight the ethics and lobbying bill, and while it appears SCHIP has the 60 votes necessary to overcome any attempt at a filibuster in the Senate, observers say it is likely to pass by a narrower margin in the House, where even some Democrats remain unsatisfied with the funding calculations.

Finally, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney told a town meeting in Iowa yesterday that the radical Shiite group Hezbollah has succeeded in gaining a toe-hold in Southern Lebanon by providing "health clinics to some of the people there and schools, and they built their support by having done so. That kind of diplomacy is something that would help America become stronger around the world."

Meanwhile, five years ago, Washington State Senator Patty Murray took some heat from conservatives when she suggested that Osama bin Laden was popular in the Arab world largely because he had been "out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building heath care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."

It's well before business hours on the West Coast, though we've emailed the Washington State Republican Party, which blasted Murray for her comments, to see what they have to say about Romney, Murray, or both.

UPDATE: "Mitt Romney was accurately describing reality, and Patty Murray was not," said Josh Kahn, spokesman for the Washington State Republican Party. Murray's comments would have been accurate, he said, if she were discussing Hezbollah.

The issue is five years old, and since then, Murray handily defeated former Congressman George Nethercutt to win her third term and become a member of Senate Democratic leadership. But Romney's comments reminded us of the Murray controversy, so we thought we'd ask.