Welcome to the 73rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (6th-12th July), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

1. Brian Paddick, ‘lined up as President of the Lib Dems’ on Meral Ece’s Meral’s Musings blog.
But plays down the Standard’s speculation here on Rob Fenwick’s A posh-sounding Northumbrian blog.

2. Not wanting Sharia law doesn’t make you a fascist on James Schneider’s Schneider Home blog.
Blog in haste, repent at leisure…

3. Iain Dale announces death of an un-named Scottish Labour MP….then retracts and apologises on Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings blog.
What could beat reading your own obituary over at Iain’s gaff?

4. Helping Helen box the Tories in Cranbrook on Bridget Fox’s blog.
Bridget blogs-up Helen Duffett.

5. Day 2743: DOCTOR WHO: I Can, I Caan’t on Millennium Elephant’s Very Fluffy Diary blog.
‘Fraid I haven’t read this one yet – still haven’t seen the season finale, and need to avoid spoilers – but I’m sure it’s a fantastic review.

6. Lessons on how to piss off 50% of the electorate – From Cllr Warren Bradley, Lib Dem Leader of Liverpool City Council on Nich Starling’s Norfolk Blogger blog.
Because football is more important than life or death.

7. EAST ANGLIA NEWS: Massive shake up of Norfolk and Suffolk boundaries planned on Duncan Borrowman’s blog.
More sensible decisions from the Boundary Commission [/irony]

And now to the five slots we reserve under the category ‘well worth reading even if they didn’t get the most clicks this week’. Remember, if you do want to highlight a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s – all you have to do is drop me a line at [email protected] (providing the web-link and author, and any tagline comment you care to have published).

8. Torturing Christopher Hitchens on Jonathan Fryer’s blog.
“Christopher Hitchens is in no doubt. I am in no doubt. Water-boarding is torture. The United States is routinely torturing people in George Bush’s War against Terror.”

9. Are “religious rights” special? on Andy Hinton’s Mindrobber blog.
Nominated by Love and Liberty’s Alex Wilcock: “Andy Hinton dissects the case of the Islington registrar who wants to personally pick who’s allowed to marry, noting that the press and court reaction might be different if she’d decided, as many religious people previously have, that mixed-race marriage was immoral.”

10. Checking your sources: blogs and newspapers on Simon Goldie’s blog.
On the perils of blogging in haste (and repenting in haste in my case).

11. Day 2744: Sarky v Mandy on Millennium Elephant’s Very Fluffy Diary blog.
Nominated by Love and Liberty’s Alex Wilcock: “The mainstream media portray the argument between Monsieur Sarkozy and Mr Mandelson as just a clash of personalities; Millennium more intelligently explains the economics and politics of free trade.”

12. Empty chair politics from our elected representativeon Ed Fordham’s Just 474 votes to win blog.
“In a nutshell I’m furious – I think he let down the people of Hampstead and the Borough of Camden, I think he has proved the words of the local Conservative Party to be shallow and hollow, I think he has shown himself to be ineffective, disinterested and revealed for being a heckling grandstander.” Click on the link to find out who Ed’s talking about?

And that’s it for another week… happy blogging.

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