Leon Wieseltier goes nuclear on President Patience:

His worst moment came when he hid behind Martin Luther King, Jr.: "What we can do is bear witness and say to the world that the incredible demonstrations that we've seen is a testimony to--I think what Dr. King called the arc of the moral universe. It's long but it bends towards justice." The president was counseling patience, and it always looks so unwise, so impetuous, to be against patience. But King was not patient with injustice. And when it came to his own campaign, to his own hunger, Obama did not cite King on the long arc of justice. He cited King on the fierce urgency of now.

I realize the dust has pretty much settled on the whole Pitney-Obama-Milbank brouhaha over whether the White House planted a question from a friendly HuffPo blogger, but I'm sort of amazed that in all the back and forth over this, no one to my knowledge has pointed out that this whole mess was precipitated by Obama's miscue. From the transcript:

MR. OBAMA: I think that the international community is, as I said before, bearing witness to what's taking place. And the Iranian government should understand that how they handle the dissent within their own country, generated indigenously, internally, from the Iranian people, will help shape the tone, not only for Iran's future, but also its relationship to other countries.

Since we're on Iran, I know Niko Pitney (ph) is here from the Huffington Post.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

MR. OBAMA: Niko (ph), I know that you and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

QUESTION: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.

This botched handoff, which has the president flagrantly teeing up the question -- because he doesn't care how it looks -- and then a nervous Pitney unable to adjust under pressure, was just so discordant and clumsy. If Obama had just gone straight to Pitney and commended his good work on covering events in Iran, there wouldn't have been any big story here (it was, after all, the second time Obama had taken questions from a "reporter" working for a website that is essentially a front for the Democratic party). And if Pitney had just kept his cool and not gratuitously announced that he wanted to ask a question directly from an Iranian after the president had just said precisely that...

It doesn't matter much now, but it just strikes me that what really burns about this whole setup is that it looked like amateur hour. If the White House is going to coordinate with a journalist on the content of his question, at least do us the courtesy of making it look good. What fun is it being in opposition if the White House is so brazen that our conspiracy theories are proved right before our eyes.

A new poll from Rasmussen on cap and trade:

As for the bill itself, 37% of all Americans at least somewhat favor it, while 41% are at least somewhat opposed to it. Twenty-two percent (22%) are not sure what to make of it.

But there’s more intensity on the “no” side: Only 12% strongly favor the measure, but more than twice as many (25%) strongly oppose it.

That's at least 41 percent of Americans (and probably more if that 22 percent of undecideds had any idea what cap and trade is) who are engaged in "treason against the planet," per Paul Krugman. And this gets to the crux of why cap and trade may end up being such a tremendous boon to Republicans. Not only do the American people oppose it by a healthy margin, but they are having it foisted on them by elites who smugly deride their opposition as treason to planet earth. If Krugman has a problem with opposition to cap and trade in Congress than he has a problem with democracy, because there is enough opposition to this bill among American voters that broad support for the measure in the House -- among those representatives who are meant to be closest to the people -- would represent a total failure of American democracy. Yet that seems to be the only outcome that Krugman would have deemed acceptable.

Lefty journalist Todd Purdum has a hit piece in the new Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. You don’t have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground.

Here’s a highlight of Purdum’s reporting: “More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--’a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’--and thought it fit her perfectly.”

Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without “several” people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Meanwhile, on the day Purdum’s piece hit the web (today), a journalist who had expressed suspicions in the past that elements of the McCain campaign had undercut Palin suddenly got a friendly e-mail from top McCain-Palin campaign strategist Steve Schmidt. This journalist hadn’t heard from Schmidt in months. Perhaps Steve was nervous someone would finger him for the Purdum piece. One reason people might do so is this passage in Purdum’s article: “All the while, Palin was coping not only with the crazed life of any national candidate on the road but also with the young children traveling with her. Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression? (Palin’s youngest son was less than six months old.)” In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt.

Yesterday I spoke with Otto Reich, President Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, about the latest developments in Honduras. Reich, who was in Panama when President Zelaya was ousted, was accused by Venezuela's representative to the OAS of being involved in the coup ("We suffered the First Reich, the Second Reich, and now we are suffering the Third Reich") -- an accusation that Reich categorically denied.

Reich says that when Zelaya was democratically elected four years ago, he was "maybe even right of center." But since then, Zelaya has fallen in with the wrong crowd. Specifically, he brought the country into ALBA, a club of nations led by Hugo Chavez and billed as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

Reich says that over the last four years, Zelaya has alienated "every single organized element of Honduran society" and that the society is now "mobilizing against him." He took petro-dollars from Chavez, but now "he can only buy the mob." Reich says that "everyone of this guy's own party voted against him," but he did fault Zelaya's opponents for acting so clumsily in removing the president. "The democrats made a big mistake," Reich says, "they should have arrested him." However, "it would be equally bad to bring this guy back."

Even though "it may be true he was removed illegally," Reich says (and as President Obama now contends), the U.S. government is acting as though nothing happened. Obama may be calling it a coup, but Reich also points out that U.S. law requires the government to cut off "assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree." And yet the government has made no indication it will cut off aid (and push Honduras into the arms of Chavez just as the country tries to realign itself in our direction). The Obama administration has also made no indication that it will remove U.S. troops from the country.

This incidents provides further evidence that Obama has trouble distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys (think Iran and Georgia before that), but it doesn't look like Obama has the courage of convictions on this, either. Presumably, he won't actually do anything to restore Zelaya.

A legal eagle friend writes in:

There's been a lot of good blog coverage of the Supreme Court's Ricci/discrimination decision and its effect on the Sotomayor nomination. Perhaps it would be worth pointing to the blog posts of National Journal's Stuart Taylor, who points out that Sotomayor's analysis for the Second Circuit was completely rejected by all nine Supreme Court justices.

Sotomayor's proponents (first and foremost, Supreme Court litigator Tom Goldstein) already are arguing that the nominee should not be asked any questions about the Ricci case, because it's theoretically possible that collateral issues arising from the case (e.g., the remedy that the firefighters should receive for the injury they've suffered) could return to the Second Circuit. But the Judicial Canons of Ethics require no such thing:

First, the Senators can limit questions to the issues decided by the Supreme Court and therefore not subject to renewed review by the Second Circuit.

Second, and more obviously, Sotomayor can simply agree in advance to recuse herself from any subsequent Second Circuit review of the case. That's a perfectly reasonable compromise. As of right now, there's no reason to think that her participation is necessary in a three-judge (or full-court) review of yet another trial court decision in that case. Second, even in the unlikely event that she is called to participate in a Second Circuit decision, the importance of the Ricci case to review of her qualifications for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court certainly outweighs the cost to a single piece of litigation.

From Obama's presser today with Uribe:

Over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable to the United States -- and that is a tradition we want to continue.

Forget Iran, since the left will make the ludicrous case that Obama was standing with democracy -- just very quietly, so as not to undermine the protests (which have since been ruthlessly crushed by a regime crackdown). Let's revisit Obama's AIPAC speech from last summer -- before he threw Israel under the bus:

We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations. That is why I opposed holding elections in 2006 with Hamas on the ballot. The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority warned us at the time against holding these elections. But this administration pressed ahead, and the result is a Gaza controlled by Hamas, with rockets raining down on Israel.

So Obama is for democracy always, no matter the result, unless he can score cheap political points. And of course, Obama was for the Gaza election ("Part of the opportunity here with this upcoming election is to consolidate behind a single government with a single authority that can then negotiate as a reliable partner with Israel.") before he was against it.

Editor's note: The following is Thomas Joscelyn's response to this letter from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

Let’s be clear about the extreme position Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has taken here: Al Qaeda-trained terrorists pose no threat to the American people. This is obviously a disturbing stance - especially for a sitting congressman.

Now, of course Mr. Rohrabacher pretends that his defense of the Uighurs detained at Gitmo is not a defense of al Qaeda-trained terrorists at all. But it is, for at least two reasons.

First, Mr. Rohrabacher offers no rebuttal to the facts and evidence I cited. This body of evidence conclusively demonstrates that the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM, and now known as the Turkistan Islamic Party, TIP) is an al Qaeda-affiliated organization. This is the position of the United Nations, the United States government, as well as other foreign governments. It should be obvious to any outside observer. Members of the ETIM/TIP have identified themselves as al Qaeda terrorists in their propaganda videos, which are not difficult to find.

It is hard to believe that anyone would argue the ETIM/TIP is not an al Qaeda affiliate when its members openly brandish al Qaeda’s black flag while threatening to commit terrorist attacks.

It is also obvious that the Uighurs detained at Gitmo were trained by the ETIM/TIP. At least 8 of the 17 Uighurs who were all, until recently, detained at Gitmo admitted a terrorist named Abdul Haq was the leader of their organization. The Uighur detainees also admitted that Abdul Haq, as well as another ETIM/TIP leader, oversaw their training camp. Abdul Haq is not only the head of the ETIM/TIP, he is also a known al Qaeda terrorist.

There is no mention of Abdul Haq in Congressman Rohrabacher’s reply and for good reason. Haq’s identity and ties to the Uighur detainees completely undermine his case. Rohrabacher writes, “The oft repeated accusation that the Uighurs held at GITMO were members of the ETIM is patently false.” This is flat wrong and Rohrabacher selectively cites the record to “prove” his point. For instance, Rohrabacher cites the Uighur detainees’ own denials of any connection to the ETIM/TIP, while ignoring that these same detainees admitted that Abdul Haq – the notorious ETIM/TIP chieftain – was their leader. This renders their denial of any ETIM/TIP connection meaningless.

More after the jump...

Editor's note: The following letter was submitted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who serves as Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, in response to this blog post by Thomas Joscelyn.

Despite the court rulings declaring the Uighurs continued detention in GITMO as unjust and the decision by the Obama administration to finally release them, there are still naysayers who refuse to believe the Uighurs pose no threat to the United States. They never have. Rather, the Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority from a remote section of China, who desired to learn how to protect themselves and their homeland against the persecution of the brutal Chinese communist regime. In that quest, they became a pawn in a bigger global chess game between the United States and China’s veto wielding power on the U.N. Security Council at a time when the U.S. needed China’s support for the impending invasion of Iraq. The naysayers, who continue to dismiss this correlation, seem to be more interested in politically expedient fear mongering than the actual facts.

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, of which I am the Ranking Member, held two hearings on June 10 and June 16. The hearings respectively focused on the Uighurs historic persecution in the occupied East Turkestan region of China and the nature of Uighur nationalism versus terrorism. Several witnesses during those hearings took issue with the recent news reports and editorials accusing the Uighurs of being associated with al Qaeda affiliated groups, specifically the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), engaging in terrorist camp weapons training and allegedly posing a national security threat to the United States.

The oft-repeated accusation that the Uighurs held at Gitmo were members of the ETIM is patently false. Not only have the Uighurs themselves categorically denied this, according to their Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) statements, but every federal court that has reviewed the case has ruled in favor of the Uighurs. The U.S. District Court of Appeals issued a detailed opinion in Parhat v. Gates (2008) that found no evidence of Huzaifa Parhat’s membership in the ETIM. It rejected the government’s ETIM evidence as “wholly inadequate” on the grounds that it did not establish that ETIM was associated with al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or that they engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its coalition partners.

Which brings up the curious decision by the United States to designate the ETIM a terrorist group in 2002. During the June 16 subcommittee hearing, Dr. Sean Roberts, associate professor of practice for the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, testified that few scholars studying the Uighur people had ever heard of the ETIM in 2002. Dr. Dru C. Gladney, professor, Pomona College, also testified that “it came as a surprise at the conclusion of his August 2002 visit to Beijing, that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage identified ETIM as the main coordinating Uighur group to be targeted as an international terrorist group. At the time, very few people including activists deeply engaged in working for an independent East Turkistan, had ever heard of the ETIM.”

A Defense Intelligence Agency analyst working on Chinese counterintelligence operations once said, “It’s the mother’s milk of counterintelligence to create phony political organizations.” He also stated that the Chinese are especially good at it and utilize this method in order to know who to watch and who to eventually eliminate.

More after the jump...

Eli Lake provides some more background on Mousavi in the new issue of TNR:

True, Mir Hossein Mousavi and the people directly surrounding him are known quantities in the U.S. intelligence community. Both Mousavi and his most powerful ally during the campaign, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were key interlocutors in the Iran-Contra affair. (It was Mousavi's office--working through a deputy named Mohsen Kangarlu--that arranged the details of the exchange of TOW missiles for the release of American hostages kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon.) We also know that Mousavi was a strong supporter of Iran's modern nuclear program. In 2007, Tehran handed over documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency showing that Mousavi approved a decision to purchase centrifuge technology from A.Q. Khan's clandestine black market in 1987. Meanwhile, the Mousavi campaign's head of "voter protection" is Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, who is generally credited with helping to found Hezbollah. During the Lebanon war, he lost his right hand when he opened a book on Shia holy places laden with explosives.

Geez, I wonder who would put explosives inside a book on Shia holy places. As far as Mousavi's history of terrorism, this would have been deeply troubling had he been elected as president, but in the event, there is little to lose by giving Mousavi the benefit of the doubt -- that his role as the figurehead for a mass uprising against the regime may have changed his view of the revolution, its support for terrorism, and its hostility towards the United States, if not its nuclear program.

Apparently some are having trouble telling the difference:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to former President Jimmy Carter, is convinced this signals “the beginning of the end for the Iranian equivalent of the neocons, the radical ayatollahs who see the world as a battle between good and evil.”

Haaretz reports:

Unlike his predecessors, the newly appointed Israeli negotiator to win Shalit's release, Hagai Hadas, is employed as an external consultant and is being paid by the Prime Minister's Office, Channel 10 reported yesterday.

The contract for his employment is for a year, starting this month. The total remuneration stands at NIS 22,684 per year.

That sentence confuses me. He will be paid NIS 22,684 for the whole year, or that is what the remuneration stands at currently, which would mean about $5 grand a month? Either way, it sounds like the job is basically a volunteer position, and Hadas will have his work cut out for him, despite Joe Klein's bizarre claim this week that "the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is a triumph of diplomacy." Shalit remains in confinement under God knows what kind of conditions and at the mercy of a terrorist group, and both Hamas and the Israeli government have denied reports that a deal for his release has been struck. In fact, Hamas has refused to provide even proof that Shalit is alive or allow him a visit with the Red Cross. When the Bush administration refused Red Cross access to illegal combatants they were pilloried by the left, but Hamas denies these rights to a uniformed combatant and Klein didn't even bother to ask Khaled Meshaal about the kid when he interviewed him earlier this month.

Haaretz does have an interesting write-up of where things stand now in the negotiations for the release of Shalit. According to the paper, there has been some progress, but "it will probably still be a long way before tangible achievements are at hand, and this is especially true with regard to Gilad Shalit."

That's what Paul Krugman calls me and the 70 percent of Americans who don't think "dealing with global warming" should be a top priority for the United States government:

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Just to be clear: state-sponsored terrorism does present an existential risk to the United States in the form of nuclear weapons, which could genuinely destroy our system of government, our economy, our way of life, if not exterminate every last person in the country. Global warming, on the other hand...well, I've asked many a scientist about the potential consequences of global warming. I've never heard a single one tell me that the threat was "existential." For example, last year I asked Julienne Stroeve, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, to tell me what the implications of a melted arctic were:

Some climate models show reduced rainfall and snowfall in the American southwest as a result of the loss of Arctic ice. Others show more precipitation in southern Europe, "but again, these are climate models, and they're not perfect. .  .  . There's no real consensus now." Beyond that, Stroeve says, "I'm not really sure at this point how it's all going to pan out, because we really don't know."

A little less rain here, a little more rain there...but she doesn't really know. Yet for all Krugman's accusations about climate skeptics -- that they are "people who show no sign of being interested in the truth" -- it's he who isn't interested in the truth, just as Obama's EPA suppressed an "internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming." Krugman doesn't quote a single scientist to back his claim that global warming poses an "existential threat" to the United States. If Krugman was actually interested in the truth, surely he would have sought out the opinion of actual someone like Stroeve. Instead, relying on his own authority as a Nobel prize-winning economist, Krugman offers a vision of global warming as worse than nuclear winter -- as if humanity hasn't survived and prospered through repeated climate fluctuations. Krugman claims he knows how it's all going to pan out -- and that anyone who disagrees with him is a traitor to planet earth.

I'd bet my pitiful life savings that my carbon footprint isn't one-tenth of Krugman's, but if he wants to call me a traitor to planet earth, fine. Just don't question my patriotism.

In the course of Donald Morrison's review of Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger, we learn that McDonald's is the largest private employer in all of France, which is sort of like being the largest provider of health insurance in North Korea, but nonetheless, it feels like a major triumph for American culture and cuisine. I once ate at the McDonald's right next to the Arc de Triomphe. My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.

As Congress tackles President Barack Obama's top two domestic priorities -- climate change and health care -- he faces some of his most serious challenges from fellow Democrats.

Uh oh: Looks like somebody just read the cap-and-trade bill...

"The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see."

Honduras Congress names a new leader.

Meddling: Back in.

Laura Bush: Remember Burma.

Worst celebrity news tie-in of the week, Washington Post.

Dear God, no.

Can it really be called "rallying" when you ditch out on rehab to vote for the cap-and-trade bill? Isn't that more like the beginning of an awesome weekend for a Kennedy?

Ed Whelan on the Ricci case.

WaPo vs. HuffPo: The rumble over who's less in bed with the Obama administration:

Col. Reuesser won:

Retired Marine Corps Col. Kenneth L. Reusser, called the most decorated Marine aviator in history and was shot down in three wars, has died at age 89.

Reusser flew 253 combat missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and was shot down in all three, five times in all.

His 59 medals included two Navy Crosses, four Purple Hearts and two Legions of Merit.

In 1945, while based in Okinawa, he stripped down his F4U-4 Corsair fighter and intercepted a Japanese observation plane at a high altidude. When his guns froze, he flew his fighter into the observation plane, hacking off its tail with his propeller.

In 1950 in Korea led an attack on a North Korean tank-repair facility at Inchon, then destroyed an oil tanker almost blowing himself out of the sky.

In Vietnam he flew helicopters and was leading a rescue mission when his Huey was shot down. He needed skin grafts over 35 percent of his badly burned body.

HT: Ledeen

The Senate Armed Services Committee followed the lead of its House counterpart late last week and added money to the defense authorization bill for additional F-22 fighters -- in defiance of a White House veto threat. As CQ's Josh Rogin reported, the Senate version of the bill "would permit the government to spend up to $1.75 billion for seven F-22 fighter planes, extending the production line into next year."

Both the chairman of the committee, Carl Levin, and ranking member John McCain voted against the provision, which passed by a margin of 13-11. In a rare instance of support for the administration's spending priorities, McCain voted against the amendment and told Rogin he would continue the fight against the F-22 when the bill comes to the Senate floor sometime after this week's recess.

A fight on the floor is a good fight for Republicans and will mean a lot of tough votes for Democrats caught between the administration and its liberal supporters on one side and their constituents on the other (jobs on the F-22 are spread across 48 states). More than that, the willingness of both the House and the Senate to push back against the cancellation of F-22, even to the point of defying a veto threat, may be just the tip of the iceberg. Missile defense will be the next big test, and with F-22 as precedent, expect that program's supporters to be emboldened.

Rice and Axelrod make clear their intention to stay the course:

The legitimacy of the government, while questioned by the people of Iran, is not the critical issue for the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability, Rice said.

"It's in the United States' national interest to make sure that we have employed all elements at our disposal, including diplomacy, to prevent Iran from achieving that nuclear capacity," she said.

Both Rice and David Axelrod, Obama's top adviser, said Ahmadinejad doesn't appear to have the final say over Iran's foreign policy. Axelrod, dismissing Ahmadinejad's harsh language against the U.S. and Obama as "bloviations," said being open to talks with Iran is not an effort to reward the country.

"We are looking to ... sit down and talk to the Iranians and offer them two paths. And one brings them back into the community of nations, and the other has some very stark consequences," Axelrod said.

It wasn't long ago that the "reality-based community" was criticizing the Bush administration for sticking to the same policy regardless of changing facts on the ground. I expected that this new administration, with its far more nuanced view of foreign affairs, would have some kind of shift in rhetoric, would show its ability to adapt to fast changing conditions, in the wake of Tehran's violent crackdown on democracy activists. Even the Bush administration used carrots in tandem with the stick, and in different proportions depending on the behavior and response of the regime in Tehran. This administration only has one gear.

Kfar Adumim Settlement, Judea (West Bank)
We stand on a promontory gazing at the bleached beauty of the Judean Desert. We could be looking at hills on the moon with a few human outcroppings: just down and to the left is the village of Anatot, birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah. Eleven miles to the west we see Jerusalem, with the Mount of Olives -- where tens of thousands of Jewish graves were desecrated during the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem (1948-1967) -- standing guard; we see Ramallah, seat of the “Palestinian government,” 12 miles to the northwest; Jericho, 18 miles to the east; and not far beyond it, Jordan. At night, the lights of Amman are visible, twinkling. Below us, a sheer drop, is Wadi Kelt, a great fissure in the summer-barren hills that fills and floods with the winter rains to tinge the desert landscape green.

Across the wadi is Mitzpeh Hagit, an “illegal outpost “named for a daughter of Kfar Adumim murdered by a Bedouin terrorist as she hiked in the crevice ten years ago. “This is a response of settlers to terror murders,” says our host, one of the original 18 settlers of Kfar Adumim. “We don’t rush out to seek revenge by murdering in return. We respond to it and honor the murdered by establishing outposts in their names.” It doesn’t look like much. How many live there, I want to know. He shrugs. Not enough. But behind us Kfar Adumim bustles with life.

Here’s what you can see here: a thriving community now 400 families strong, comprising 2,500 or so people, including many of the first generation of children born and raised here who have come back after their army service and education to raise a new generation -- that would be an instance of the “natural growth” that is sending the Zionism-allergic Obami into anaphylactic shock; a schoolhouse where all the children of the settlement are taught; a synagogue; houses shaded from the desert sun by spreading palms and towering eucalyptus; the spikes and spines of succulents everywhere. All of this scratched and scrabbled out of the desert from nothing at all by an idealistic bunch of pioneers who settled here in 1979.

Here’s what you can’t see here: Palestinians. Not a single one. Here’s why: There aren’t any within 10 miles. They weren’t robbed, displaced, or dishonored by the building of this settlement or that outpost. They just never lived here at all.

Around the dinner table are members of the Israeli “elite,” highly educated and mostly left: a government official, a banker, a retired government official, a journalist, a scientist. The talk is all politics, Israeli and American, and of course Iran. Our host begins to express his worry that Obama’s response to Iran has increased the already great existential threat to Israel. The journalist -- he’s really no more than a political gossip columnist like Al Kamen, but newspapers are still read widely in Israel, so he’s “influential” -- interrupts with a peroration on the stupidity of George W. Bush and the insanity of his Iraq war. He throws in an attack on the U.S. policy on Cuba, just for good measure. A scientist informs me how much hope and spirit Obama has brought to America. I say I think he’s just a plain old political hack dressed in a cool young man’s empty rhetoric. She performs the civilized lefty two-step: the dumbfounded smile followed by the condescending sigh. It's almost worse to hear leftist garbage spilling out of the mouths of Israelis. I jump into an argument about bargaining for a "peace" agreement to say that withdrawing from settlements in Judea and Samaria with a people entirely inimical to the survival of Jews is the height of insanity. “They don’t just want your settlements. They want Jerusalem, too. And they want you to disappear into the sea.“ There’s an existential threat to Israel, and it’s a lot closer to home than Iran, or even the local Arabs.

As the party is breaking up, the journalist turns to me, laughing: “When we post-Zionists want to remember what it was like to be a Zionist, we’ll think of you.”

On our way back to Jerusalem we are stopped at a checkpoint, and happy to be so.

Here’s how President Obama concluded an interview in the Oval Office today:

“But, look, I just think that what we've been doing over the last six months is getting people back into fighting trim. This is a town where there was just a belief that nothing could get done....I'll use just the workout metaphor, and that is, you know, when you start training again and you're pushing your body a little bit harder, sometimes it hurts. But if you keep on at it, after a while your body adjusts. And I think that's what's happening to politics in Washington. Folks have been sitting on the couch for a while, and now they're starting to feel like, hey, you know what, I can run. And that's why we're getting stuff done.”

All hail our new personal trainer! Until he entered the White House, everyone was a mere couch potato.

Funny. I’d thought that, a couple of years ago, when the war in Iraq was going badly, it was Sen. Obama who wanted to give up because, he thought, “nothing could get done.” I’d thought it was President Bush, and Sens. McCain and Lieberman, and Gens. Petraeus and Odierno, who had insisted on making great exertions to try to turn the situation around. But I guess they were just sitting on the couch.

I’d also thought that Bush, McCain, and some Democrats had made real efforts a couple of years ago to try to deal responsibly with the difficult issue of immigration. I’d thought that it was Senator Obama who had supported poison-pill amendments that killed the bill, thus ensuring “that nothing could get done.” But I guess the immigration reformers were just sitting on the couch.

And I guess history began on Jan. 20th, 2009.

But wait--what about last couple of weeks? Some serious people thought the United States could do some good by weighing in on behalf of the Iranian people against their regime. President Obama apparently believed that nothing much could be done. Wasn’t he the one playing the couch potato in the midst of an international crisis?

But I guess the president was too busy to focus on helping demonstrators fighting the regime in Iran. He was busy getting us Americans “back into fighting trim.”

Here's the view of one senior House GOP staffer who just emailed me:

"Tonight, 50 Democrats lost their jobs and this bill is dead in the Senate."

According to C-Span, eight Republicans voted with the Democrats.

Update: The eight Republicans include two likely 2010 Senate candidates--Mike Castle of Delaware and Mark Krik of Illinois:

McHugh (NY)
Reichert (WA)
Smith (NJ)
Lance (NJ)
LoBiondo (NJ)
Bono Mack (CA)
Castle (DE)
Kirk (IL)

Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill.

Bermuda may have taken Gitmo detainees in order to soften Obama's crackdown on offshore banks.

Joe Biden will mediate dispute between top Obama intel officials. What could go wrong?

Palin mocks Kerry.

Charles Krauthammer: Can Mousavi become Iran's Yeltsin?

Jim Geraghty: Obama's $44 million lie.

Reason.tv: What If Government Ran Health Care?

The House held several hours of debate today on the cap-and-trade bill, which grew by a whopping 300 pages overnight, with a vote planned for this evening.

Just as things were wrapping up, Rep. John Boehner took the floor for his several minutes to speak. When he surpassed his five minutes, and went cruising on past 20, Rep. Henry Waxman interjected with a parliamentary question (somewhat paraphrased, but close):

"I know we have these magic minutes that allow leaders to speak forever, but is there a limit on how long he can speak, under parliamentary prodedure," he asked.

The chair, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, answered the California Democrat disappointingly: "It is the custom of the House to hear the leader."

Boehner then went on to read from the 300+ pages of amendments added to the 1,200-page at 3:09 a.m., berating the Congress for the irresponsible way it was approaching the mammoth bill:

"Don't you think the American people expect us to understand what's in this bill before we vote on it," he asked. "I hate to do this to all of you, but when you file 300-pg amendment at 3:09 in the morning, someone has to work on it. I've been working on it today, and I'm gonna make sure you understand what's in this."

Right now, he's still talking with no signs of slowing down. The reading of the bill is an edifying end to an embarrassing day on the floor, during which there was a lengthy debate between Tauscher, bill co-sponsor Rep. Ed Markey, and Republican Rep. Joe Barton on whether there was even a copy of the final version of the bill available for lawmakers to see (not that they'd read it).

The Democrats were hoping for a vote this afternoon. Guess we'll see how long Boehner can talk.

The Hill's Michael O'Brien reports that Obama attached a signing statement to the war-funding bill--breaking, once again, his campaign pledge to end a practice that was oh-so-nefarious when President Bush did it:

What George Bush has been trying to do as part of his effort to accumulate more power in the presidency is he's been saying 'well I can basically change what Congress passed by attaching a letter saying I don't agree with this part or I don't agree with that part. I'm gonna choose to interpret it this way or that way.' That's not part of his power.

But this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he's going along. I disagree with that. I taught the constitution for 10 years. I believe in the constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States.

We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress.

Hope and change.

Ben Smith does a good job trying to get to the bottom of Dennis Ross's move to the NSC, but it's still far from clear just what this means for administration policy toward Iran or Israel. Dan Senor offers some speculation, telling Smith that the move will bolster the position of those inside the adminsitration who believe that solving the Iran problem is a precondition for getting traction in the peace process and not the other way around. "Dennis is much more of the view that you cannot solve major problems in the region without dealing with Iran. It’s Iran first, it’s not the Palestinians first," he tells Smith.

Senor also claims that the move marginalizes George Mitchell, which would be good news if it were true. However, an administration official is quick to rebut the claim, telling Smith, “Mitchell’s much closer to the president on the subject matter than Dennis is." I'm inclined to believe that. Rashid Khalidi is probably closer to the president on this subject than Ross is, too.

All we know for certain is that Ross got taken off the Iran portfolio at State during a major crisis in Iran. He's been moved to the NSC where he will have a much broader portfolio but an unknown, and I suspect much diminished, role in making policy (and spinning it to increasingly nervous Jews). Still, David Makovsky, who knows Ross's current views on these issues better than anyone, says that Ross is "skeptical of a grand bargain." That might make him the only real realist in the White House.

Michael Crowley has some good speculation on this as well.

Update: Dan Senor emails:

Mike -- just read your blog on Ben Smith's article. I disagree. My sense is that the White House is the engine of foreign policy making in this Administration. Dennis is such a phenomenal briefer that -- combined with his new increased access to Obama -- he will only be all the more influential.

Also, just consider what we already know about the internal ecosystem. If you were working on foreign policy in Obama-world, wouldn't you prefer closer proximity to Rahm/Axelrod than being stuck at Foggy Bottom?

The Washington Post reports on the view among Arab democracy activists of events in Iran:

The frustration comes against a backdrop of deep-rooted skepticism among pro-democracy activists that U.S. policies under President Obama will help transform the region, despite his vow to engage the Muslim world in a highly publicized speech here last month. Some view Obama's response to Iran's protests, muted until Tuesday, as a harbinger of U.S. attitudes toward their own efforts to reform their political systems. The Egyptian government, they note, is a key American ally, and U.S. pressure on Egypt for reforms began subsiding in the last years of the Bush administration.

"When Obama does not take a stance, the very next day these oppressive regimes will regard this as a signal. This is a test for his government," said Ayman Nour, a noted Egyptian opposition politician who was recently released from jail. "If they can turn a blind eye to their enemy, they can turn a blind eye to any action here in Egypt."

Maybe some obscure event that happened fifty years ago can explain why Egyptians would want U.S. support and Iranians wouldn't. Perhaps it was America's support for Egypt in the Suez crisis versus its meddling in Iran to bring down Mossadeq that explains why democracy activists in Egypt view the American role differently. Or maybe an American should always try to be on the side of those who seek democracy and freedom, and stand against those who impose tyranny on their own people.

Glenn Greenwald has a two-part Britney Spears-style meltdown because this blog expressed concern about the conditions under which Gilad Shalit has been imprisoned for the last three years by the terrorist group Hamas. Apparently Greenwald thinks I'm guilty of applying a double standard -- concern for the treatment of uniformed hostages and ambivalence toward the treatment of terrorist detainees. Well, guilty as charged. I really don't care about the rough treatment to which men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were subjected even for the chance of gleaning valuable information. Gilad Shalit, on the other hand, is a uniformed combatant entitled to all the rights and protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

The United States, Israel, and the rest of the civilized world do not target civilians, do not hide weapons in mosques, do not use our own children as human shields, do not send our own children to their deaths as suicide bombers, do not seek the extermination of an entire race of people. Terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and the regimes that sponsor them, do. That is why we are morally superior to them, and they are morally inferior to us. And that is also why I'm confident that Gilad Shalit would give anything to have spent the last three years at Gitmo -- playing soccer, watching tv, getting three squares a day -- instead of being a prisoner of Hamas. Because even though they don't deserve it, we still treat our detainees better than terrorists treat theirs.

As far as whether "neocon enemies" are responsible for brokering the deal for Shalit's release, given that Shalit is still in captivity, and given that details remains sketchy, it seems premature to start assigning credit. But the notion that Jimmy Carter is an "enemy" of neoconservatives is absurd. Carter is clearly a dupe, and he's been an annoyance to presidents of both parties for decades, but he is no enemy. Whatever Carter's role in this, if Shalit is released, Bibi will get much of the credit with Israelis, just as if the regime in Tehran falls, Obama will get much of the credit here at home. Leaders get credit for the good things that happen on their watch -- whether they deserve it or not.

One final note: Greenwald writes that I "think that Obama's leverage over Israel is dependent upon the domestic approval ratings of Netanyahu. Actually, that leverage is grounded in the tens of billions of American dollars in aid to Israel, the supplying of American weapons for Israel's various wars, and the multiple forms of diplomatic protection the U.S. extends to Israel." I wrote that Israeli public opinion was Obama's "best leverage" over Netanyahu. Greenwald may not support Israel, but most Americans still do, which means that withholding or threatening to withhold aid, weapons, or diplomatic support from Israel is lousy politics for an American president, even if it would be a dream come true for Greenwald.

From the Times's Caucus blog:

The death of Michael Jackson on Thursday recalled his brush a quarter century ago with an aide to President Ronald Reagan — John G. Roberts Jr., who would go on to become chief justice of the United States. Mr. Roberts, it appears, was not the King of Pop’s biggest fan in the White House.

One of Roberts's duties was to review presidential correspondence. He rejected a couple of attempts to have President Reagan send Michael Jackson fan mail. The rejections were relayed with Roberts's typical wit and polished prose:

"I recognize that I am something of a vox clamans in terris in this area," Roberts wrote to White House counsel Fred Fielding, "but enough is enough. The Office of Presidential Correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson’s PR firm. “Billboard” can quite adequately cover the event by reproducing the award citation and/or reporting the President’s remarks. (As you know, there is very little to report about Mr. Jackson’s remarks.) There is absolutely no need for an additional presidential message. A memorandum for Presidential Correspondence objecting to the letter is attached for your review and signature."

And later:

"I hate to sound like one of Mr. Jackson’s records, constantly repeating the same refrain, but I recommend that we not approve this letter. Sometimes people need to be reminded of the obvious: whatever its status as a cultural phenomenon, the Jackson concert tour is a massive commercial undertaking. The tour will do quite well financially by coming to Washington, and there is no need for the President to applaud such enlightened self-interest. Frankly, I find the obsequious attitude of some members of the White House staff toward Mr. Jackson’s attendants, and the fawning posture they would have the President of the United States adopt, more than a little embarrassing."

Classic.

In recent weeks, European nations have come forward to say they are considering taking, or will take, some Gitmo detainees. Since January, Europe has only accepted a handful of detainees under special circumstances. The Obama administration wants Europe to take more, but the European nations have been less than helpful. It appears that is beginning to change, as more and more reports indicate that some European nations are considering accepting a handful of detainees each.

But there is something curious about these reports. The detainees in question are infrequently, if ever, named.

So, we learn that Ireland is considering taking two Uzbeks. Which ones? We don't know. There are at least four Uzbeks left at Gitmo from which to choose, and press reports don't name them.

Portugal may take two or three detainees, but the government has yet to say "which countries they might be from or whether they would be treated as prisoners in Portugal as well."

Italy has agreed to take at least three Tunisians detained at Gitmo, but we are not sure which ones because they have not been named in press accounts either. President Obama trumpeted the agreement with Italy after his meeting with Prime Minister Berlusconi earlier this month.

"This is not just talk, Italy has agreed to accept three specific detainees," Obama said. But as Agence France Presse noted, "There were no immediate details on the identity of the detainees."

Perhaps somewhere in the media ether the names of all these detainees who are either being considered for transfer, or are already scheduled to be transferred to Europe, have been spelled out. But I have not seen them, and I have looked.

That is curious, no? You would think the most transparent administration in history would want people to know the names of the detainees it is transferring. Right?

Or maybe we will just have to wait for another late Friday announcement that is intended to avoid the news cycle.

Andrew Shearer, who served as national security adviser to former Australian PM John Howard, goes nuclear on Obama:

Barack Obama came to office full of lofty rhetoric and promises to restore American leadership. As street protests begin to peter out, ground into Tehran’s pavements by thugs unleashed by its authoritarian Islamist regime, it is becoming clear that he has failed his first major foreign policy test.

When young Iranians took to the streets spontaneously to express their outrage at an election that had obviously been stolen (rather than just rigged around the edges as usual), the great orator seemed tongue-tied. His sentences – usually so rich and sonorous – were carefully parsed, spare with caution and respect for Iran’s sovereignty. The great communicator had become the great equivocator.

It took global revulsion at Youtube footage of a young Iranian woman bleeding to death in the street before he expressed appropriate outrage – almost a week late. But even when he acknowledged her death was ‘heartbreaking’, Obama’s language was bizarrely legalistic and went to awkward lengths to avoid sheeting home responsibility to the regime: Neda Agha Soltan’s death was ‘unjust’, he eventually intoned.

Unjust? Arbitrary arrest or a fine would have been ‘unjust’. Her death was a cold-blooded, brutal, appalling murder by an illegitimate government and should have been denounced in those terms, as should the previous extrajudicial killings.

Read the whole thing here.

Greenpeace just came out in opposition to the massive, 1,200-page bill the House is considering today. I say 1,200 pages, but it may have expanded to 1,500 overnight, as there's a rumor than 300 pages of amendments were added around 2 a.m.

Conservatives quickly took to Twitter to laud Greenpeace, which is opposing the bill for entirely different reasons than the Right, but nonetheless.

Thus, the cap-and-trade bill solved global warming for free, before even being passed, because Hell hath officially frozen over.

The House has been slugging it out all morning on the floor over this monstrosity. After their moment of silence for Michael Jackson, they'll be back to it. Americans for Prosperity has a target list for voters to call, and activists on Twitter have been referring followers to the Congressional switchboard.

President Obama himself called fence-sitters yesterday, but the winds do not feel favorable for Pelosi's giant, sweeping overhaul of the energy economy. If the bill narrowly passes, as was predicted yesterday, it's likely to make life difficult for a bunch of Blue Dog Democrats in 2010.

Update: Hearing that the bill has been pulled from the House floor this morning, but will likely reappear this afternoon, at which point Pelosi will presumably think she has the votes for it. There's also word that she's threatened to keep House members through the weekend until they vote "yes."

Michelle Malkin is live-blogging the debate on the impending cap-and-trade vote in the House.

Or not.

Remember when certain congressmen and presidential candidates denounced "predatory lending" last year? Too-good-to-be-true teaser rates on adjustable-rate mortgages supposedly tricked borrowers into taking out loans they couldn't afford. It was never clear to me why people wouldn't understand that adjustable-rate mortgages could be adjusted, potentially leaving borrowers paying a lot more in the future, but I suppose that some lenders had acted improperly to the extent that they actively tried to conceal what an adjustable-rate mortgage means.

Now we see Obama and other supporters of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill selling the bill by doing what mortgage-brokers were condemned for--advertising its initial cost without factoring in big increases in the future. Call it predatory taxation.

The president and other cap-and-trade supporters are pointing to a CBO study that estimates the program will cost $165 per household in 2020. But as Jim Manzi notes Obama's predicts that cap and trade will cost $1,100 per household by 2050. Other estimates are much higher.

As the Journal noted yesterday, the Heritage Foundation

found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Regardless of whose numbers are more accurate, it's clear that cap and trade will cost much more in 2050 than it will in 2020. Keep in mind that Congress will not have to pass a new bill each year to keep these progressive tax increases intact.

From Chad Johnson, aka Ocho Cinco, a classy walkback:

Okay, first Mrs. Fawcett now Mr. Jackson, please tell me that this is a mistaken rumor, if not this is just as sad as 9/11...about 4 hours ago

okay not as bad as 911, its sad period, both situations my goodness people, they just said he is okay in the hospital...about 3 hours ago

The 9/11 was a bit over the top, i am just in an emotional state right now, bare with me while i regroup people, be back in 10 minutes...about 3 hours ago

Sorry 85 million times, today sucks man, i still have my jacket with the zippers on it, wow...about 3 hours ago

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who also served in the Clinton White House, seemed to aggrandize Obama at Clinton's expense at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning in D.C. When asked to talk about the differences between his current and former boss when addressing national and international crises, Emanuel responded, in part:

"Obama has what President Clinton has—it's not appropriate to say 'on steroids'—but at a quotient of ten."

He was referring to their natural political talents and charisma, as opposed to any particular policy point. Emanuel also called Clinton "for a host of reasons, a very significant president," and praised his "creative mind," while describing Obama's as a "disciplined mind."

"President Obama has one of the most disciplined minds and styles I've ever seen," he said, before discussing differences in the challenges the two presidents face on the economy and international affairs.

Everyone is well-acquainted with the uncomfortable relationship former President Bill Clinton and Barack Obama shared during the campaign. As Bill campaigned, he was accused of making too many racially-tinged arguments during the primary and too few appearances for Obama during the general, but no matter where he was, he was frequently an irritant to the Obama campaign. The awkwardness extended into Obama's presidency, as Clinton accused Obama of sounding insufficiently hope-filled on the economy in February. This may not help the situation.

The neocons are the bad guys, pressuring Obama to take a tough stand against tyranny and murder in Iran with the aim of emboldening Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. At least that's what I keep reading at the Huffington Post and Think Progress. Meanwhile, the realists advising Obama are the great heroes of our time, guided by America's self-interest rather than some fanatical Zionist ideology. So I'm curious to see how the left responds to this from the realist realist in American today (and also unofficial adviser to Barack Obama) Brent Scowcroft:

The US has intelligence agents in Iran but it is not clear if they are providing help to the protest movement there, a former US national security adviser has told Al Jazeera.

Brent Scowcroft said on Wednesday that "of course" the US had agents in Iran amid the ongoing pressure against the Iranian government by protesters opposed to the official result of its presidential election.

But he added that he had no idea whether US agents had provided help to the opposition movement in Iran, which claims that the authorities rigged the June 12 election in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president.

"They might do. Who knows?" Scowcroft told Josh Rushing for Al Jazeera's Fault Lines programme.

Of all places to say something so foolish, Scowcroft choose Al Jazeera for maximum effect. A neocon emails: "This is unbelievable, really. If he does know that we have a few assets in CIA…that is, for one reason or another, he still has access to this stuff…he’s just blown a hole in his secrecy pledge. But, also, by saying what he has, he’s just made it more likely that the regime will feel even more confident about making the accusation of US interference with the result that Iranians are more likely to be arrested, if not killed."

A long time ago, magazines and newspapers would receive feedback from readers via letters. These consisted of words in ink or pencil committed on paper. Most shockingly, the information was often handwritten. Other times a type machine was used. The writer then had to place the paper in an envelope, fix a stamp on the corner, and drop it in a mailbox. Editors would receive these letters a few days later.

Those were the days. Today, feedback is efficiently relayed in a matter of seconds through electronic mail (and at times not well written, rash, or incredibly offensive). But this still is not the case everywhere.

Fans of Radio Free Afghanistan will write ornate letters and send them to the Kabul station, which in turn sends them over by the rice bag to Prague. According to Akbar Ayazi, director of Radio Free Afghanistan (known in-country as Radio Azadi), some 300 to 400 letters are sent their way each week. In his office he has me lift the bags and rifle through the correspondence, mostly on loose-leaf paper. I can't make sense of any of it but Ayazi tells me the listeners tell the station they are fans of the show, their likes and dislikes, and pretty much whatever else is on their minds. And then he shows me one of the longest letters ever sent. Glued together and unscrolled, it came to about 6 meters. It was written by a 14-year-old Afghan boy and broken into sections about himself, his country, the drug problem, girls, and poetry. Radio Free Afghanistan is the most listened to of all the RFE broadcasts, with 52 percent of the market tuned-in to them (12 hours of talk, news, and music).

In my years at the magazine, I'd seen my fair share of handwritten letters. But none of them came to that length. Ayazi says there is even a crank (my word, not his) who sends him a letter each week from Istanbul, Photoshopped with women's bodies and images of politicians. I saw this letter and can confirm this is crank material. But it is not the worst I've seen. That would date from the late 1990s: A crayon illustration of Uncle Sam with his pants down, and Bill Clinton and Al Gore on their knees. The "artist" even pasted human hair to certain sections of Uncle Sam. Like I said, the worst.

Haaretz reports:

European diplomatic sources said Thursday that kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit will be transferred to Egypt in the coming hours or coming days.

This information has yet to be confirmed by Israeli officials.

Shalit was abducted three years ago to the day. One shudders to think about the conditions of his confinement. If this turns out to be true, per yesterday's post, Bibi's approval numbers will skyrocket, further undermining Obama's leverage over him.

Politico reports the threat from the White House. I'm not buying it. The Senate Armed Services Committee is in a closed door mark-up of the defense authorization bill, and the White House is obviously concerned that they're going to follow the lead of the House Armed Services Committee, which jammed more than $300 million back into the defense budget as a down payment on 12 more F-22s. Now Carl Levin can tell the Dems on that committee that it'd be a waste of time to follow suit, but does anybody believe that President Barack Obama is going to use his first veto on a defense budget that he thinks spends $300 million too much on fighter jets? Really? That's only a little more than the stimulus was set to spend on resodding the national mall -- an expense which Robert Gibbs zealously defended before the Dem leadership cut it from the bill out of some not-seen-since sense of shame.

There are two reasons why the House shoved F-22 money back into the budget. First is jobs. There are a lot of jobs at stake and F-22 contracts are spread across 48 states. When the Obama administration and Congress are spending trillions of dollars on stimulus spending and health care and green energy and every other Democratic hobby horse, it's not surprising that members would ask why a few hundred million to keep critical defense jobs in their district is considered by this adminsitration to be a waste of money. But the second reason for this sudden resistance to Gates decision to close down production of F-22 is that Congress has been told for years that 187 airframes is not enough for the Air Force to carry out its mission. While Gates claims that this isn't the case -- that 187 copies is enough -- as one expert says, "he can’t show a lick of paper that confirms his decision was anything but a budget drill."

The press will play all this as Congressmen pushing constituent interests, but that's only part of the story. Congress is also starting to push back against the Obama administration's long-term vision for U.S. defense. In short, Congress is doing its job.

Last week on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd reported that administration officials were "frustrated that they're not getting credit for what's going on in Iran.…they think that Cairo speech did help supporters of Mousavi sort of see light at the end of the tunnel in their country."

As Jonah Goldberg noted, that idea spread to the pages of the Washington Post by Tuesday, in this report:

But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic's Islamic authority in its 30-year history.

Today, speaking to a group of Washington reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reinforced that argument by declaring that Obama's speech in Cairo "will go down as one of the most significant foreign policy speeches."

"It was equal to what Kennedy's speech was, what Reagan's speech was," he said. "I think he did 20 years worth of work...for advancing America's interests...We are no longer the issue in that region of the world."

He went on to cite several recent Middle Eastern political events as evidence that Obama's approach was bearing fruit. He mentioned elections in Lebanon, which gave the Western-backed March 14 coalition a majority of seats in the parliament there. He cited a February vote in Iraq (Obama was apparently able to affect that with the mere mulling of a speech to the "Muslim world."), which rewarded Maliki's crackdowns on militias and rejected Iran-aligned religious candidates. He cited Kuwaiti elections, which gave seats to women while taking seats from Islamists.Then, onto Iran:

"Or, you look at Iran: the moderate voices of reform that are willing to accept some kind of engagement in modernity are winning, and the extremists are back on their heels," Emanuel said. "It's not just one speech, but it's a series of policies."

That Obama. He's something else.

Just as the Dems are trying to nationalize healthcare, within the Ways and Means Committee Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) is out with a new effort to highlight the rampant waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid -- and just how bad an idea it would be to simply create a far bigger Medicare-for-all system.

His Medi-Fraud Alert and blog has some eyepopping facts and figures -- some estimates are as high as $500 billion per year in healthcare fraud. Major taxpayer $$$ down the drain.

The Roskam quote: “When dead doctors, illegal immigrants, and convicted repeat offenders are filing medical claims, and getting paid by the U.S. taxpayer, we have an urgent problem on our hands…” And indeed the the Medi-Fraud Of The Day examples on his blog have some pretty ridiculous stories of crooks defrauding the American taxpayer --day in and day out. No wonder Obama doesn't want his own family on the public plan.

Lieberman, McCain, and Graham held a presser announcing new Iran legislation they intend to introduce. It will increase funding for Radio Farda and Voice of America, both of which have been critical at keeping Iranians informed of what's happening in their own country and reporting those events to the outside world as well. They also talk of funding a new Farsi-language website with live news coverage, and "funding to foster the spread of technologies that would make it harder for the Iranian regime to crackdown" on the transmission of information over cellphones.

Lieberman sums it up: “We’ve seen that the Iranian regime has tried to deploy new technologies to restrict its people from getting access to information, prevent its people from exercising their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, particularly online. The Iranian government has jammed satellites and radio broadcasts, disrupted cell phone service, monitored Internet use, and blocked particular Web sites. It’s now trying to slam shut the door that a vibrant election had begun to open. The legislation we intend to introduce is inspired by a clear and simple purpose. We want the Iranian people to be able to stay one step ahead of the Iranian regime, getting access to information and safely exercising freedom of speech and freedom of assembly online.”

Lieberman again: “This legislation is not about endorsing or aiding one particular civil society group versus another in Iran. It is not about handing out American money to reformers in Iran. It is about the fundamental right of all Iranians to get access to the information they want, when they want, without interference or intimidation by their government. It is about the fundamental right of all Iranians to exercise freedom of speech and freedom of assembly online.”

A great McCain line: “During the Cold War, we provided the Polish people and dissidents with printing presses. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are the modern-day printing presses. They are the way. They are the way to spread information and keep the hope of freedom alive amongst the Iranian people.”

CQ defense reporter Josh Rogin asked Lieberman "Do you have any indications from Democratic leadership that they plan to move this bill through the process? Does it have Joe-mentum?" Lieberman responded, "Well, I hope it has more Joe-mentum than my ‘04 presidential campaign."

Full transcript after the jump (via CQ):

Undivided Jerusalem
My Israeli seatmate on the flight to Israel turns to me and says “Obama.” My heart sinks. “What the hell he does now?” he demands to know. “Why he hates us and he doesn’t care about us? And what he is doing with Iran? He is crazy?” If he’s expecting a defense, or even a coherent explanation, he’s picked the wrong interlocutor. Unlike most of my comrades in the Zionist-neocon plot to take over the world, I did not think the Obamic statement on Iran was good. I didn’t even think it was good enough. Not good enough for our “international community” president to invoke the international community, again, speaking of “tired strategies”--or is that a tactic?--and wave its outrage like a white handkerchief at the Iranian regime; not good enough to deplore the “threats, the beatings and imprisonments,” as though they’ve been taking place in the vacuum “of the last few days” rather than playing out over the last few decades; not good enough to look at scenes of mayhem and murder and say, “The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future.”

This is not a debate: “the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence . . . people of all ages risk[ing] everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard . . . courageous women stand[ing] up to the brutality and threats . . .” could be a description of the struggle for civil rights that began before Obama was born and raged on while he toddled around Hawaii and Indonesia. Was that a debate, in his opinion? Were Jim Crow laws, enforced not infrequently through violence by cracker governors and their baton-wielding minions, a matter of “sovereignty,” not to be “interfered with,” in his view? Unlike that one, the one in Iran is a fight whose outcome looks grim. Where’s that “soaring rhetoric” on whose angels’ wings this actually rather inarticulate man floated into office? This ain't it.

(We’re seven hours later here, so I’m a little behind on the news, but I gather we won’t be celebrating our independence with representatives of “the Islamic Republic of Iran” this year. Bravo, Obami--or are you now going to start pretending that you never invited them in the first place?)

So I answer my seatmate, rashly: “I actually have no idea who this man is or what he believes.” This elicits a very Israeli tirade, full of assurance about Obama’s secret ties to Islamism, his secret education at madrassas, and so forth. Conspiracy-theorizing is not exclusive to the far left and right fringes of the American polity. It abounds in Israel as well. And while I don’t believe a word of this Barack Hussein Obama stuff, and my seat-mate’s certainty makes me bristle, I have to say I wouldn’t mind knowing the answers to my own questions.

But it’s that very certainty--of the absolute rightness of their cause (and opinions); of their military prowess; of the importance of their refusal to keep giving more in exchange for less; of their brilliance at saving and absorbing the lives of Jews from every corner of a mostly Jew-intolerant globe; of their genius for invention; of their mastery over swamps and deserts--that has always made Israelis so impressive and attractive. This morning I watch as a group of Americans gathers in the lobby of our hotel to meet their tour guide. He will be taking them on a walk through the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and he begins with a little history lesson, telling his wards how Jordan took control of it and destroyed much of it in the 1948 war against the Jews, and afterward refused to allow Jews to enter it, and how Israeli soldiers liberated it in the Six-Day-War, and wept when they realized they had reached the Western Wall. He’s got some miles on him, but he also still has some of that Israeli dash and swagger, and I know--and he will be sure to let them know, as they get underway--that there’s a gun strapped to his belt. It doesn’t show, unlike the three cell phones sticking out of various pockets, but it’s there, and it’s a good thing, alas.

Tomorrow we visit friends who live in a West Bank settlement. Take that, Obami!

It was to be expected that the American people would sympathize with Jenny Sanford after her husband, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, admitted to an affair with an Argentine woman named Maria. The affair, and its odd revelation, took over the national news cycle for several days as the South Carolina governor went from "missing" to "hiking the Appalachian trail" (in what will surely become the next unfortunate sexual euphemism guffawed about ad nauseum by Washingtonians who inexplicably think they're the first to make the joke) to "reportedly spotted at the Atlanta airport" to "returning from Argentina" to "estranged from his wife" to "crying for five days" in a foreign country, and finally, to tearing up for the cameras in his home state. Whew.

But Jenny, who declined to play the hurt-but-loyal wife at her husband's press conference, has gotten a warm reception in places unexpected.

Her graceful statement, which I'll print in its entirety below the fold, was lauded by all on the Right, and in glowing terms by several on the Left. Michael Roston, a liberal writer at True?Slant, offered the party some advice for 2012:

Mrs. Sanford should divorce her husband immediately, and open a political action committee. She ran her husband’s campaign for election as governor, and re-election, and was Vice President for M&A at Lazard Freres & Co. She QUOTED THE BIBLE in her statement explaining why she kicked her cheating husband, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, to the curb.

Even the normally snarky and left-leaning Gawker was short on snark for Jenny.

And, it being the Internet age, Jenny has already inspired an online campaign in support of her. She has a Twitter account in her honor, @TeamJenny, which is a nod to the pop-culture practice of picking sides in a celebrity break-up, ala "Team Jen" or "Team Angie" and "Team Nick" or "Team Jessica."

The irresistible combination of the sad absurdity of Sanford's Argentine affair combined with the pop-culture tie-in with the musical "Evita" has earned Jenny Sanford her own t-shirts and branding already: "Team Jenny: Don't Cry for me, Argentina."

The aftermath of Sanford's revelation will be, at many turns, very public and very ugly for his family. There should, of course, be consequences for Sanford himself, and there will be, especially given new reports that he may have used taxpayer money to travel to Argentina. But one can recognize Sanford should suffer consequences and simultaneously regret that that means his family will, too. The search "Mark Sanford mistress photo" is already the third-most searched term on Google. As soon as she and her picture are revealed, the coverage will intensify. His love letters to Maria are being parsed and parodied enthusiastically, and one can hope his kids are being shielded from all of it.

Given all the rudeness and invasiveness the Internet age is capable of inflicting on Jenny and her sons, it's nice to see that even the Internet recognizes a heck of a woman when they see her. Jenny Sanford's statement is below the fold:

It's a little long for my taste, but given that only 24 percent even know that cap and trade is environmental legislation, Republicans have some explaining to do if they want to build any real resistance to the measure. Add to that the fact that video of Democrats admitting electricity rates will "skyrocket" under cap and trade is about as common as footage of bigfoot, and this is pretty good work from the whip's office.

It's not clear Pelosi has the votes to get the thing out of the House despite a compromise with Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, but Gore was supposed to come in and twist arms today before Friday's vote and cancelled at the last minute -- reportedy because his services were not longer needed. So maybe she does have the votes -- and I'm starting to hope that she does.

If this passes the House, one of two things happens. One possibility is the Senate does nothing, in which case Nancy will have hung the entire Blue Dog caucus and a bunch of other moderates out to dry by forcing them to take a tough vote on cap and trade for nothing. Republicans will be able to hammer these guys in 2010 for voting against the interests of their own constiitiuents for some pie-in-the-sky environmental program that even a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate wouldn't touch with a ten foot poll.

Alternatively, the Senate does pass cap and trade and saddles Americans with the most complex tax scheme in the history of the world. Their energy bills go up -- "skyrocket" in Obama's words -- while the economy is still in the toilet. The left is out there claiming that this legislation will cost Americans the equivalent of one postage stamp a day. Good luck with that. The whole point of cap and trade is to obscure the costs, and Republicans will be telling voters that half their electric bill is a feel-good tax imposed by tree-hugging Democrats.

Basically, cap and trade strikes me as the Iraq war of the Democratic domestic policy agenda. It's the overreach moment. It's a massive program that, unlike health care reform, no one is demanding, no one understands, and no one can explain. Cap and trade may be the only thing that can save the Republican party from eight years in the wilderness.

Noemie Emery sends in reasons this scandal is better than others:

1. He’s a name, not a number.
2. No hookers crossing state lines to hotel assignations.
3. No one comes out as one more ‘Gay-American.’
4. No Israelis on payrolls as security experts.
5. No one has cancer, or is not in remission.
6. No love children, or hotel basement chases.
7. No angry beards, threatening tell-all explanations.
8. No fancy footwork in men’s rooms in airports.
9.No fancy stances, of any width or variety.
10.No wives standing by, looking brave and embattled.
11. Who says right-wingers don’t like other countries?
This is truly a Foreign Affair.

Via NRO:

There will be a Candle vigil this Thursday at 8:30 in Dupont Circle NW, Washington, D.C. to honor and remember those who have died in Iran.

Please come wearing black with a white candle.

Elliott Abrams has an important piece in the Wall Street Journal on U.S.-Israeli agreements about natural growth of West Bank settlements.

While much attention has been focused on the House Armed Services Committee’s decision last week to include funding in the fiscal 2010 defense authorization act for the purchase of 12 additional F-22s despite Secretary Gates’ efforts to shut down the program, one of the most hotly debated aspects of the Obama administration's defense cuts is turning out to be missile defense, not the F-22.

During the House Armed Services Committee’s mark up of the fiscal 2010 defense authorization act last week, Republican attempts to restore funding for missile defense were repeatedly rebuffed by Democrats. The Democratic defense of the administration cuts was led by President Obama’s nominee to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), who if confirmed will be the top State Department official responsible for spearheading missile defense negotiations with our allies and the Russians.

Rep. Tauscher and her fellow Democrats rejected five amendments, including a motion by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) to restore the entire $1.2 billion that the Obama administration cut from the missile defense budget and amendments to fund additional interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska -- interceptors that would defend the United States from the growing North Korean threat. The administration plans to cut the U.S. missile defense system interceptors in California and Alaska by 35 percent at a time when North Korea is threatening to launch a missile toward Hawaii.

House Republicans were able to make some progress on the issue of the missile defense sites planned for the Czech Republic and Poland. Building on “NATO First” legislation introduced by Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) and Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA), Republicans inserted language in the authorization act ensuring that unspent funds from fiscal 2009 could still be used for the construction of the European sites. The defense authorization act also now includes language requiring that any alternative to the Czech and Polish sites defends both the U.S. homeland as well as our European allies. This may seem like common sensel, but the alternatives favored by Democrats, including Rep. Tauscher, do not provide for an effective defense of the U.S. homeland.

The European sites also received much attention on the other side of Capitol Hill last week, as Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn and other Pentagon officials testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During his statement, Deputy Secretary Lynn noted that “No final decisions have been made regarding missile defense in Europe.” This confused several members of the Committee, including Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Sessions, who expressed concern that the Obama administration was turning its back on commitments made to NATO allies.

Given several opportunities to modify his remarks, Lynn repeated his statement that the Czech and Polish sites were one of several options that the administration was considering, implying that the Obama administration might void the agreements signed with both countries by the Bush administration.

This will surely be music to Russian ears as President Obama heads to Moscow in the coming weeks for a summit with Russian President Medvedev. Moscow believes that the Czech and Polish missile defense sites are an American effort to meddle in Russia’s backyard and have repeatedly threatened to retaliate if the sites are constructed.

The Obama administration is currently focused on a deliverable for the President’s summit and, despite the best efforts of missile defense supporters in the House and Senate, appears to be considering a trade of missile defense for Russian acquiescence on a new arms reduction agreement. As Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said in a statement released on Wednesday, “’Arms control for arms control sake’ is what appears to be guiding these negotiations, and it simply does not work.”

An incredible video shows an Apache helicopter in action against Taliban militants.

Jim Manzi: Dear Member of Congress: Why You Should Vote Against Waxman-Markey.

Robert Kaplan: Iran's Struggle, and Ours.

John Kerry's latest botched joke.

Chavez whips up anti-Semitism.

The Guardian: Neda Soltan's family 'forced out of home' by Iranian authorities.

A friend emails in response to the news that Obama has rescinded Fourth of July invitations to Iranian diplomats:

Maybe the White House is just embarrassed that none of the Iranians RSVP'ed! How humiliating to be throwing a party that no one wants to come to!

We're told that Obama's policies are really far more pro-Israel than those of George W. Bush, who didn't have the foresight to see the demographic weakness of the Jewish state, and didn't have the courage to pressure its citizens into painful concessions -- for their own good. But the Israeli public is apparently quite hostile to President Obama, news that the anti-Zionist left will no doubt welcome but which should alarm those hoping for real progress in the peace process. David Bernstein makes the key point at Volokh:

This is bad news for Obama's Middle East plans, regardless of whether the poll results are objectively justified. If Israelis think that a pro-Israel president is putting justified pressure on a recalcitrant Israeli prime minister, that prime minister will have to yield or leave office. But if they think the prime minister is standing up for vital Israeli interests against a president who is hostile or indifferent to Israel, they will back the prime minister. Obama might want to invest some of his charm and charisma in wooing the Israeli public.

Much of the analysis prior to Obama's meeting with Bibi focused on the delicate balance that an Israeli prime minister must strike in relations with the United States. If Bibi refused Obama's demands and jeopardized relations between the United States and Israel, he risked a crisis of confidence in his leadership. Give too much ground on settlements and other issues dear to the Israeli right and he risked the same fate. But if only 6 percent of Israelis believe Obama is a friend of Israel, how much pressure to keep warm relations with Washington will Bibi really feel? it's counterintuitive, but Obama may have gone so overboard in his public pressuring of Israel that he's given up his best leverage -- Israeli public opinion.

The Washington Times reports:

The White House has rescinded the invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at U.S. embassies around the world.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said nobody from Iran RSVPed to come, and at this point, the invitations are no longer valid.

"Given the events of the past many days, those invitations will no longer be extended," Mr. Gibbs said.

Perhaps the president found time, in between perusing Urdu poetry, to re-read Thomas Jefferson’s great June 24, 1826, letter to Roger Weightman, on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

May it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self government. That form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born ,with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others.

CNN airs an interview with another Iranian necon, this one a girl who just witnessed a "massacre" in the heart of Tehran. The video follows, but at one point she tells the CNN correspondent (starting at about 2:05): "This was exactly a massacre. You should stop this, you should help the people of Iran who demand freedom. You should help us." The interviewer doesn't even know how to respond.

The left wanted Obama to keep his mouth shut for fear of undermining the protesters by allowing the regime to portray them as U.S. pawns. Well, at what point does Obama risk alienating a future generation of Iranians by sitting on the sidelines as they get butchered in the streets?

Via John Boehner's press office:

In a CNBC interview today, prominent Obama supporter and economic advisor Warren Buffett blasted Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax, calling it a “huge tax” and “fairly regressive” that will harm “an awful lot of people.”

Video here:

The House will vote on cap and trade on Friday.

From today's briefing:

The White House has rescinded its invitation to Iran diplomats to attend its July 4 festivities.

None of them RSVP’d, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. But, he added, "I don’t think it’s surprising that nobody’s signed up to come given the events of the past days," Gibbs said. "Those invitations will no longer be extended." (2:30 p.m.)

The heavy-handed response of Iranian security services to the continuing protests has forced the Obama administration to change course, but some of us already knew how profoundly vile that regime was. It didn't take a girl being murdered in cold blood and bleeding from her mouth and nose for most Americans to understand how repressive and dangerous the "Islamic Republic" really is. The hot dog diplomacy was a symbol of this administration's naive faith in the power of diplomacy and in their own power of persuasion. So there is some small consolation in seeing Barack Obama and his supporters mugged by reality. Now let them deal with the Iranian regime as it really is -- a ruthless military dictatorship that sponsors anti-American terrorism around the world and is in desperate pursuit of a nuclear weapon. You might have to negotiate with such a regime, but you don't invite them over for a game of cornhole.

The boss forwards an e-mail from a friend who's been watching Mark Sanford's press conference in disbelief:

Everyone's been advising the Republicans to broaden the tent, to get beyond the narrow moralism that has allegedly bedeviled the party. Now the fates have conspired to give the GOP an easy and obvious way to do this: Sanford-Ensign in 2012!

A few days ago, Jennifer Rubin, writing at Pajamas Media, wondered: “Why is the Justice Department Cozying Up to Islamic Radicals?”

Rubin obtained a copy of an email seeking volunteers at the DOJ to represent the department in its booth at the Islamic Society of North America’s convention. ISNA is no moderate Islamic fellowship, Rubin noted. Because of the excellent work done by federal prosecutors and organizations such as Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), we know that ISNA has longstanding ties to radical groups around the world.

For example, ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That trial resulted in the conviction of five former HLF officials who, among other illicit activities, were soliciting funds on behalf of Hamas, a radical wing of the Muslim Brotherhood that seeks the destruction of Israel.

As the Emerson’s IPT has noted:

Federal prosecutors identified ISNA as a “member organization” of the “U.S. Muslim Brotherhood” on its list of Unindicted Co-conspirators and/or Joint Venturers.

That is, federal prosecutors believe that the ISNA is a Trojan horse, operating on U.S. soil to collect funds for international extremism and terrorism, as well as to influence American public opinion.

Despite ISNA’s disturbing ties, Rubin noted, the DOJ has repeatedly made “outreach efforts” to the organization. This occurred during the Bush years and has continued on in the Obama administration. An ISNA employee was even invited to speak at Obama’s inaugural prayer service.

If ISNA’s ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood won’t dissuade the DOJ from befriending the organization, perhaps the group’s ties to an al Qaeda charity will.

In a must-read exposé on the financial ties between Saudi Arabia, including members of the royal family, and al Qaeda, the New York Times linked to several supporting documents today. One of these documents is a dossier prepared by German criminal investigators in 2003. The Germans investigated the financial dealings of an organization called the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), which moved hundreds of millions of dollars around in its sponsorship of terrorism.

TWRA was run by senior Bosnian government officials, and sponsored the relocation of hundreds, if not thousands, of jihadists to Bosnia to fight in the 1990s. While carrying out some legitimate humanitarian functions as a cover, TWRA was really a front for global terrorist operations.

And the ISNA was likely one of its donors.

The German criminal investigators' entry on ISNA reads (see this page on the Times’s web site):

Islamic Society of North America

Four credit entries by check were identified, whose sender where (sic) all indicated as “Dyewood Center I.S.N.A.” In total an amount of USD 102,197.85 was credited. This organization is likely to be the “Islamic Society of North America”, headquartered at Plainfield, Indiana, USA.

German criminal investigators concluded that ISNA’s six-figure donation to TWRA was split into four transfers between July and October of 1992.

What was TWRA doing at the time? It was funding the terror network that executed the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and orchestrated a follow-on attack against landmarks in the New York metro area.

All the folks who thought the Right was being unreasonable yesterday will suddenly decide that univiting the Iranians to a barbecue that would happen concurrent with their murdering of dissidents in the streets is the coolest, smartest, most measured response ever. Hey, today is a new day:

The Obama administration is seriously considering not extending invitations to Iranian diplomats for July 4 celebrations overseas, senior administration officials tell CNN.

The officials said intense discussions on the issue were taking place, but the final decision had not been made.

Late last month the State Department sent a cable to its embassies and consulates worldwide informing them they “may invite representatives from the government of Iran” to their July 4th celebrations.

The U.S. receptions marking Independence Day usually feature symbols of Americana, such as hot dogs, red-white-and-blue decorations and remarks by U.S. officials about America’s founding fathers.

The Obama administration had decided to invite Iranians to the celebrations at overseas posts as part of President Obama’s policy of engaging the Iranian regime.

Well, at least he's moving, even if he's behind the pace of common sense:

But officials said the violence against protesters that has ensued since the June 12 election has caused the administration to rethink the timing of such engagement.

Reihan Salam writes at the Daily Beast:

And though Obama couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge McCain’s influence, or even that his script has changed at all as events have unfolded, it’s clear Obama has come around to a darker view of Iran’s rulers. Just as Obama was hilariously reluctant to concede that he might have been wrong to oppose the military surge in Iraq in 2006, he now insists that his statements have been utterly consistent.

Yet his statements haven’t been consistent for the good and understandable reason that the White House is trying to thread an unthreadable needle. No one doubts that the president wants to condemn the crackdown in Tehran, yet he’s also hoping to cut a deal with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The trouble is that Obama fundamentally misreads the Islamic Republic, just as he once misread Iraq and Afghanistan. To his credit, however, the president eventually reversed course on both fronts, without ever saying so. On Iraq, he retained many of the architects of George W. Bush’s post-surge strategy. In Afghanistan, he abandoned early efforts to “lower our sights” in favor of a robust expansion of the American role in strengthening the country’s security forces, winning him praise from his erstwhile neoconservative enemies.

Slowly, the president’s embrace of crabbed realism is coming undone.

There is a huge gap between Obama's soaring rhetoric during the campaign and the hyper-realism of his foreign policy as president. Hayes went through Obama's Berlin speech yesterday noting the enormous discrepancy between his rhetoric then and now, and Greg Pollowitz pulls another bit of Obama's campaign trail rhetoric: "Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy—tough, direct diplomacy where the president of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for." Can any Obama supporter claim with a straight face that this president hasn't been afraid to let the petty dictators in Iran "know where America stands."

Obama's "realist" foreign policy has already proved an overcorrection from the Bush years and is so at odds with the rhetoric of his campaign and his self-image as a crusader for justice -- it's unsustainable. Even Steve Clemons is going neocon in response to events in Iran. The president can't be that far behind.

You thought his outreach to the Iranians was a disgrace:

Variety's David Cohen saw the latest "Transformers" movie --- "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" --- and filed this report on its reference to President Obama, but not, at least in his eyes, in a good way.

Cohen writes, "So as usual in these movies, the federal bureaucrats are portrayed as annoying if not villainous. The President's man, "Galloway," is a bespectacled blowhard who becomes an obstacle to our brave fighting men and their alliance with the noble Autobots. Operating specifically under presidential authority, he makes all kinds of mischief. He says the President wants to try "diplomacy" against the evil Decepticons and hints the President would consider handing over Shia LaBouf's character to be killed by them. He eventually is ditched by the fighting men (tricked into parachuting out the back of a transport). All this is par for the course in this kind of movie. In the first, there was a Rumsfeldian secretary of defense (played by Jon Voight) and a bit of dialogue from "the President" clearly meant to be Bush, with an obvious Bush impression on the dialogue.

"However, if memory serves, no real politicians were named in the first movie. The SecDef isn't Rumsfeld. The president is not called by name.

"In this movie, exactly one real-life politician is named: "President Obama." They went out of their way to make sure they named the craven, obstructionist president as Obama."

I'm appalled. After eight years in which Hollywood did nothing to raise the consciousness of the American people about the horrors of the Bush administration, it doesn't even take them six months to go after a Democratic president. It's like E.J Dionne is always saying, conservatives just control the media.

Yes, we know. You're the president.

"How is it that Obama was a genius yesterday for not condemning Iranian brutality and tomorrow he’ll be heralded as a genius for condemning it today?"

Milton Friedman on "How to Cure Health Care."

In other news, Mark Sanford is also a hypocrite for having used an office on Capitol Hill when he was a representative and for driving on federally funded roads.

Why do we pay more for medical care? Partly because our doctors make more money.

“If all of the health plans [including a government-run health plan] are on the same level playing field and everyone is guaranteed access to health insurance, why would you need public option?”

Protests in Baharestan Square.

Mark Sanford will face the press at 2 p.m.

Lessons on a government-run insurance option from Florida's government-run home insurance option.

A comedy 3,000 years in the making (slight content warning for one curse word near the end, so beware):

Less than 24 hours after Barack Obama's strongest statement on Iran, three new stories underscore his administration's fundamentally weak approach to the terrorist regime and offer hints as to why he has been so eager to engage the mullahs. First, a Washington Times article by former USA Today reporter Barbara Slavin reveals that the Obama administration sent a letter directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early May. According to the report, the letter laid out the administration's desire for "cooperation and bilateral relations."

In a related piece of news, NBC's "First Read" contacted the White House seeking comment on the report. "We have indicated a willingness to talk for a long time and have sought to communicate with the Iranians in a variety of ways. We have made it clear that any real dialogue -- multilateral or bilateral -- needed to be authoritative. Not gonna get into the specifics of our different ways of communicating, but there is an outstanding direct request from the Perm 5 plus 1 that was made on April 8th. The Iranians have yet to respond to that."

That means that the White House, having had its multilateral request ignored, decided to have President Obama open a direct line of communication seeking negotiations on Iran's nuclear program and "cooperation in regional and bilateral relations." In his sermon at Friday prayers last week, Khamenei
accused Obama of fomenting unrest in Iran -- something Obama went out of his way to avoid -- and then used the letter to accuse Obama of double-talk. "On the one hand, they [the Obama administration] write a letter to us to express their respect for the Islamic Republic and for re-establishment of ties, and on the other hand they make these remarks," he said, according to the Times.

So what did Obama write? There are many reasons not to believe Khamenei's characterization of the letter. Did Obama actually "express his respect for the Islamic Republic?" If so, how did he do this? And, better question, why?

As we've noted before, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said this during a Q&A session after a speech he gave last May at Kansas State University. "It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq."

Did Obama seek to convey his respect for a government that has chosen, as a matter of policy, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq?

Now comes a blockbuster story from National Review's Andy McCarthy. He writes:

Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages.

Here's what happened:

About two weeks ago, the Obama administration released Laith Qazali after extensive negotiations with the Asaib al-Haq terror network. That network has long been in negotiations with the fledgling Iraqi government, dangling the possibility of laying down its arms, renouncing violence, and integrating into Iraqi society, provided that its top members — particularly Qais and Laith Qazali, as well as Ali Mussa Daqduq — be released. Realizing, however, that these terrorists were responsible for kidnapping and killing American soldiers in gross violation of the laws of war, the Bush administration had declined to release them.

The Obama administration has not only released Laith Qazali, it has been in negotiations to release his brother, Qais Qazali, as well. The negotiations and release were carried out in flagrant disregard of the longstanding policy against exchanging prisoners for the release of hostages. Undermining that policy endangers all American troops and civilian personnel — as well as the troops and civilian personnel of our allies — by encouraging terrorists to kidnap them to use as bargaining chips.

Surely the most transparent administration in history will release the letter sent to Khamenei, no? And surely they will explain the release of terrorists responsible for killing American soldiers, right?

If they don't, their silence will go a long way toward explaining Obama's week-long reluctance to offer anything that could have been interpreted as a criticism of the current regime.

Jules Crittenden:

I recommend the United States embassies and career diplomats that are being compelled to go along with this travesty mullah-proof their Fourth of July events by inviting a lot of girls in American flag bikinis, just to be on the safe side. It’s a surefire antidote to Obama’s latest dumb foreign policy plan!

I'm a day late, but this is important. ABC's Jake Tapper reports that three members of Styx were seen at the White House Monday.

He wrote: "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto -- 3 members of Styx are about to be given a WH tour."

Domo Arigato? Seriously? You would think that if Tapper were going to make a Styx song reference in his "tweet" on Styx visiting the White House, he could have come up with something better than "Mr. Roboto" -- known primarily to Top 40 poseurs to who didn't like the real Styx before they went commercial. The obvious choice? "Renegade," off Pieces of Eight. It was the band's single best song and it was Obama's secret service code name during the campaign (not to mention the name of Richard Wolffe's book about Obama.)

By the way, Styx is playing with 38 Special at the Calvert Marine Museum on July 7. There is a rumor that the manliest member of the TWS staff will be attending.

UPDATE: A friend writes, "Based on some of the decisions Obama is making, The Grand Illusion
or Borrowed Time are also fitting song references."

Looks like Rudy Giuliani is giving a lot of thought to how someone might reform New York state government. ...

I peg this at about 60 percent bias and 90 percent bull (unverified transcript from CNN):

BROWN: Not to beat a dead horse, but I'm going to beat the dead horse to try to get an answer to this question. We're watching this violence unfold and yet you're administration has told embassies around the world to invite Iranian diplomats to their Fourth of July parties. The president talked about this today and didn't really answer the question. Wolf Blitzer asked you about it, as well, and you didn't answer it. Can you answer it yes or no?

AXELROD: Well, what I said was what the president said which is, you know, the ball's really in their court. We'll see what happens in the next -- in the next days.

BROWN: So that means, I'm guessing, the invitation does still stand? And the question is will they show up?

AXELROD: It means, let's see what happens in the next few days.

BROWN: What are the ramifications of giving a yes or no answer to that?

AXELROD: Well -- first of all, let me just say this. I don't think that the opportunity to have a hot dog at the embassy is likely the thing that is going to influence the Iranians. And, you know, that is not a major tool of foreign policy.

BROWN: But it sends a powerful message. It is a way to open up a dialogue. It's about a lot more than having a hot dog. You know that.

AXELROD: Actually, it's a way to close down a dialogue. I don't think anybody in Iran is fixated right now on what they're going to be doing on July 4th in embasies around the world. They've got a crisis they ought to deal with and ought to resolve it in the interests of the people of Iran and they ought to pull back from repressive tactics they've employed.

BROWN: We'll end it there, David Axelrod...

Former vice president Dick Cheney has signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to publish his memoirs. The book will be published by the house’s “Threshold” imprint, run by former Cheney adviser Mary Matalin. The opportunity to work with Matalin again was a significant factor in the decision, says a source close to Cheney.

The book is in progress – with the basic format of the book set and detailed outlines of the key chapters already completed. While it is not being undertaken as a “score-settling book,” but Cheney will write openly about the major decisions of the Bush presidency, including the most controversial ones – the Iraq War, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, Enhanced Interrogations and the surge. One source familiar with the writing process says at least fifty percent of the book will examine the Bush presidency -- something that is sure to generate interest when the book is released in 2011. (Though I have to say that in researching the book I wrote about Cheney, I found his earlier career as interesting as his role as vice president.)

Liz Cheney, the older of the former vice president’s two daughters, is working nearly full-time on the book and Robert Karem, a sharp young national security aide to Cheney during the second term, is working on research.

Cheney has been blunt and direct since he left office earlier this year, articulating views that have not been given much of an airing, given his reluctance to deal with the media throughout his time as vice president. Although people have a broad sense of where Cheney stood on issues as vice president, I expect the book to contain lots of surprises. He managed to make news a fair number of times in the interviews that I used for my book. I expect he'll do that even more now that he doesn't have anything keeping from speaking his mind.

Prague
At the Kolkovna bar and restaurant, upon telling the waiter I preferred nonsmoking seating, he looked at me with slight hesitation before saying that section is located not outside along the sidewalk or in the back of the room but rather in the basement. I chose the smoking section. It is easy to forget in our health-conscious culture that so much of the rest of the world, particularly regions like Eastern Europe, enjoys a good smoke. Residents are not shoved into a confined space or forced outside their office buildings (and in some instances around the corner or in a back alley). Not that there is smoking inside every building, but certainly you can still have a cigarette at a bar. And at Radio Free Europe’s new digs, there is a special roofdeck where the workers can light up, gather around, gossip, and further conduct business.

(The new building is sleek and modern and as secure as the Pentagon. And unlike the old building, the former communist parliament, there is air conditioning. “Some of us had ice buckets under our desks for our feet,” one staffer recalled. But some of the journalists do have a complaint—namely that many of them once had offices but are now thrust into a bullpen like the newsrooms we see on television. The horror!)

1) Obama's made the least out of his strong opening statement on Iran. Having used the word "condemn" -- for the first time -- and "appalling" as well, the president followed up mostly with mush. He ducked the question on whether Iranian diplomats are still invited to July 4 celebrations at American embassies and consulates around the world. This means they are. And it was clear that, at the moment, Obama has no plans to impose any conseqences on the Ahmandinejad/Khamenei regime. His engagement policy, unsuccessful so far, endures.

2) As Brit Hume noted on Fox News, the press conference may signal the beginning of the end of Obama's honeymoon with the press corps. But it may not. The toughest questions came from two reporters who could be expected to ask tough questions: Major Garrett of Fox and Jake Tapper of ABC News. Let's see if they are called on at the next Obama session with the media. In any case, Obama was put on the defensive for the first time at a press conference, this one his fourth as president. Then again, the press gang yucked it up with Obama when he parried a question on whether his words on Iran had been influenced by John McCain's. "What do you think?" Obama responded. If he'd been truthful, he simply would have said, "yes."

3) The president may be trying to give up smoking, but he doesn't appear to be making a serious effort to stop using the crudest rhetorical device of all: the straw man. This time it was all those folks who want to do nothing to reform the health care system. There may be some of those folks around but they aren't players in the health care debate now. It's Republicans and a significant number of Democrats who oppose his health care plans, not a do-nothing brigade.

4) While we're on health care, Obama seemed proud of himself as he defended the "logic" of the Washington-run insurance plan, the so-called public plan. He shouldn't have been. He left out the three of the most important aspects: the public plan will be subsidized by the taxpayers and will have lower fees than private insurance. These private insurance companies won't be able to match and still make a profit.

5) One of the worst things a politician can do is deny the obvious. This is not smart and usually unneccesary. Obama could have given an honest answer and said his comments about the Iranian regime got tougher as he learned more about what was going in Iran and it became clear that violence was being used against the democratic protesters. Instead, he said he'd been consistent in his remarks. Even the most egregious toady in the White House press corps knew that wasn't true.

Harry Reid pledged that Congress would take up an immigration reform bill by the end of this year, but Ed Morrissey points out that the White House is trying to squelch any expectations that an immigration bill will come up soon, with health care and cap and trade dominating Obama's domestic agenda.

As the recession has reduced the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, the issue hasn't been in the news much. Immigration groups, however, are still clamoring for Obama to follow through on his pledge to change the law. One of the more interesting proposals, as Morrissey notes, is the Red Card Solution being promoted by Helen Kreible. The plan, which has earned praise from Newt Gingrich and Mike Pence, would set up private firms, funded by employers of guest workers, south of the border that would match workers with employers in the United States. While the plan would help create an equilibrium between the supply and demand for foreign labor, I doubt that the federal government would allow private firms to be responsible for security background checks on prospective workers, as the video pitch for the Red Card Solution suggests.

Barack Obama's statement today on Iran was good. His answers to questions that followed were not.

Most interesting was his exchange with Chuck Todd of NBC News. Todd asked why Obama has refused to discuss consequences for the behavior of the Iranian regime, given Obama's stated concern about human rights abuses.

Obama's answer was blunt and unsatisfying, saying that he won't talk about consequences because "“we don’t know how this is going to play out."

That misses the point. The reason to talk about consequences is, at least in part, because it offers an opportunity to influence how this is going to play out. It may be the case that there are few potential consequences from the international community that could affect regime behavior. But if that's the case -- and given the regime's support for terror, its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, its theft of the election, and its violent suppression of the protests -- doesn't that make it more urgent for the international community to at least try to affect behavior and at least raise the possibility that there will come a time when the world refuses to recognize the current regime?

The protesters themselves seem to understand this and -- in interviews and in statements on their signs, etc. -- they have implored the United States to withhold recognition of the corrupt regime still attempting to hold onto power.

Obama said that it was more important for the Iranian regime to demonstrate its legitimacy to the Iranian people than to the international community and the United States. The regime cannot do this, of course, because the election was fraudulent, something Obama still refuses to acknowledge, preferring simply to observe that many Iranians think the election was illegitimate. Passive, again. So much for his promise to "remake the world once again," and to "help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.”

"When will Mr. Ahmadinejad be considered not legitimate in the eyes of his people?" asked Asar Nafisi, a viisiting Professor at Johns Hopkins and author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran," in an interview on CNN after the press conference.

Good question.

This is Russia invades Georgia redux. Obama flails for a few days and finally gets the rhetoric where it should have been from day one. If speaking forthrightly is right today, why was it not right four days ago? If speaking forthrightly would endanger allegedly greater interests, why speak today? If speaking forthrightly would enable the mullahs to make the United States the issue, why speak today?

The intellectual and moral incoherence of Obama's pronouncements is staggering. Today he decides to join Merkel, Sarko, et al in expressing concern for the brave Iranians fighting for their freedom with his customary swagger. We should not just sit back and say better late than never. We should see the dangers of a soulless president whose limited foreign policy instincts are all wrong, who refuses to discuss the consequences of murder with a Bush-like swagger and who's so stubborn and rigid he won't even rescind an invitation to a barbecue. It's a shame he didn't stick to reading the great Urdu poets.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Monday that Iranian diplomats are still welcome to attend Fourth of July parties at U.S. embassies around the world:

"There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats," Kelly said. "We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran. And -- and we tried many years of isolation, and we're pursuing a different path now."

Fox News's Major Garrett asked the president at the ongoing press conference if that is still the case. Obama replied:

we don't have formal diplomatic relations with Iran. I think that we have said that if Iran chooses a path that abides by international norms and principles, then we are interested in healing some of the wounds of 30 years, in terms of U.S.-Iranian relations. But that is a choice that the Iranians are going to have to make.

Q But the offer still stands?

THE PRESIDENT: That's a choice the Iranians are going to have to make.

Does that mean there's a deadline by which the Iranian militias need to stop shooting innocent women in the streets in order to enjoy the July 4th barbecues?

Update: This post has been updated to include Obama's full response.

The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.

I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.

The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future. Some in the Iranian government are trying to avoid that debate by accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd. They are an obvious attempt to distract people from what is truly taking place within Iran’s borders. This tired strategy of using old tensions to scapegoat other countries won’t work anymore in Iran. This is not about the United States and the West; this is about the people of Iran, and the future that they – and only they – will choose.

The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That is precisely what has happened these last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to the peaceful pursuit of justice. Despite the Iranian government’s efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cell phones and computers, and so we have watched what the Iranian people are doing.

This is what we have witnessed. We have seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands Iranians marching in silence. We have seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and their voices heard. Above all, we have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights, and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent, not coercion. That is what Iran’s own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government.

There are some things to quibble with, but this is much, much better.

Sanford had not been in touch with his staff, security, or family since Thursday, but his office sent an update last night saying he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail:

"I apologize for taking so long to send this update, and was waiting to see if a more definitive idea of what part of the trail he was on before we did so," said Joel Sawyer, the Republican governor's spokesman. Sawyer added that he will update the public on Sanford's specific whereabouts as soon as he knows them.

The governor, who has a reputation for being an unorthodox politician, opened the door to plenty of criticism from political rivals with his disappearance. State Sen. Jake Knotts worried about the line of succession during yesterday's national speculation. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who is positioning himself to run for governor when Sanford's term is up, complained that his request to speak with the governor had been denied:

Bauer said he called Sanford’s office Monday and requested an “immediate phone conversation with the governor.”

“That request was denied because the governor’s chief of staff does not know where the governor is, and has not communicated with the governor since he left South Carolina last Thursday,” Bauer said. “I cannot take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts.”

He'll be back tomorrow to face the political dust kicked up in his absence:

Sanford communications director Joel Sawyer said that the governor called his chief of staff this morning to check in and added: "It would be fair to say the governor was somewhat taken aback by all of the interest this trip has gotten."

He'll have to act quickly to tamp down concerns that he was being irresponsible or, that dreaded political euphemism, "erratic," but Sanford's take-me-or-leave-me attitude may not lend itself to an explanation tour.

At this point, my favorite speculation is that the governor's hike was shrouded in secrecy because he may have been partaking in Naked Hiking Day. Unlikely, but points for color.

The DNC, which has been making a habit of attacking Sanford on the stimulus, should tread lightly on the disappearance story. After all, the DNC Chairman himself is a governor who's been missing in action since roughly January.

So the Iranians are charging the families of those murdered by the basij $3,000 for the privilege of burying their children. Barack Obama is paying $12 million per Uighur to any country that will take them. If Obama is to sit across from A'jad or Kamenei or whoever Joe Klein thinks is in charge of Iran, and assuming the Iranians are willing to part with their nuclear program (an assumption for which there is zero evidence), what do you think the starting offer from Iran would be? And how much would Obama be willing to pay? Just what would this "grand bargain" cost the United States?

Bill Sweetman has the scoop:

This Sunday, June 28, National Geographic TV airs Hitler's Stealth Fighter. Set your TiVos or just kick the rest of the family off the TV, because this one should be good.

Back when stealth was very, very secret, a few people quietly advised me to take a look at the Horten Ho229, one of WW2 Germany's most advanced designs - a jet-powered flying wing made of wood. In a German book, a British documentary producer had found something even more interesting: the Horten brothers, Walter and Reimar, had planned to use a primitive radar absorbent structure (RAS) in the leading edges. They were to be made from a sandwich of plywood around a carbon-loaded filler. The only question: how well would it actually have worked?

The documentary was directed by Mike Jorgensen, who also directed the excellent Battle of the X-Planes that chronicled the competition between Boeing and Lockheed to design what would become the Joint Strike Fighter. Should be pretty awesome. And worth clicking through if only to see the mock-up of the Ho229 that's been constructed in the middle of the desert.

The editors at the New York Times line up with Joementum on a matter of national security:

The Bush administration planned to increase the Afghan Army from 90,000 troops to 134,000. That still won’t be big enough to secure a vast, rugged country with a larger population than Iraq’s. American planners propose expanding it to as many as 260,000 troops — roughly the size of Iraq’s Army. No decision has yet been made.

The Pentagon estimates that it would cost $10 billion to $20 billion over a seven-year period to create and train a force that size. Paying it would cost billions more, especially if the current $100-a-month salary is to become more competitive with the $300 the Taliban pays.

The total bill would still be a lot smaller than the cost of sustaining a huge American fighting force there. By the end of this year, there will 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, costing American taxpayers more than $60 billion a year.

Lieberman, meanwhile, has been the Senate’s most dogged advocate of a bigger Afghan National Army. A few weeks ago, he wrote to President Obama together with Carl Levin and 15 other members of the Senate Armed Service Committee, arguing for an immediate expansion in Afghan ranks. Key excerpt:

Taking an incremental approach toward the development of the Afghan security forces does not reflect realities on the ground. Given Afghanistan's population, size, geography, and security challenges, it is clear that a 134,000-strong army will be insufficient to the country's long-term needs, and that a significantly larger force will be required.

There is ultimately no more cost effective approach to secure Afghanistan than to build up the Afghan National Security Forces dramatically. The cost of such increase is very modest because of the relatively small wages of troops and police in Afghanistan. Indeed, for the cost of a single American soldier in Afghanistan, it is possible to sustain 60 or more Afghans.

With a diminished number of Western reporters on the ground in Tehran, more and more of whom are getting arrested, much of the news out of Iran is based on the innumerable eyewitness reports that come by phone and Internet. Making sense of it all here in Prague is Rod Shahidi, director of Radio Farda. None of what he has heard is good: We will probably never know the number of fatalities, somewhere in the hundreds. Bodies are now being taken from the city morgues unreported. In other instances, families of the victims have had to pay for the return of a body--sometimes called a "bullet fee"--costing as much as $15,000. While there might have been some reluctance on the part of the military, security forces are definitely cracking down, camping out in the parks, taking hold of the country. Residents are being forced to name names, asked to rat out neighbors. More of the opposition is being arrested. “Allahu Akbar” can be heard chanted from the rooftops, as well as “Death to the dictator!” referring to Khamenei. Perhaps most lethal are the snipers.

The problem, from what I have heard from Iran experts like Mehrdad Mirdamadi, is that the demonstrators have no leader, no overall head organizer with one message and unifying directives. Mousavi has reluctantly been the figure Iranians are looking to and many are hoping he does more. It is rather unclear, however, if he will step up. And what role will Rafsanjani play? The chaos is playing right into the hands of the regime.

Politico's Josh Kraushaar goes after Marco Rubio:

Twitter hasn’t always been a politician’s best friend — see Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra’s comparison of House Republican floor rebellions to the uprising in Iran or Newt Gingrich calling Sonia Sotomayor a “racist.”

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio is the latest to make his own curious comparison drawn from the Iranian demonstrations — that the protesters would have more success if they had a constitutional right to bear arms.

“I have a feeling the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd amendment like ours,” Rubio tweeted on Sunday.

Not sure if Rubio was advocating an armed uprising from the otherwise peaceful protesters, but his follow-up tweet was a bit more dovish: “Hoping police and military in Iran will refuse to attack unarmed civilians if ordered to do so.”

I follow Rubio's Twitter feed -- it's dreadfully boring, as any politician's should be. This statement is not only boring, it's about the least controversial thing someone running in a Republican primary could possibly say. Rubio was not advocating an armed uprising, he was lamenting the fact that there couldn't be one because the population is...unarmed. Ed Morrissey mocks, "wouldn’t it be just awful if an armed citizenry overthrew a tyranny by force and established democracy and liberty?" I'd love to read the Kraushaar story lamenting that development.

Update: Chris Matthews hit this too: " Then again it wouldn't really be a non-violent protest, would it Mr. Rubio, if the non-violent protestors were walking around with guns!" Because there's no principle more sacred to Republican primary voters than non-violence in the face of oppression.

Andrew Sullivan links to a poll on U.S. public opinion, which finds that 43 percent of Americans believe that the level of support President Obama has provided for Iranian demonstrators has been “about right,” while 35 percent believe he has not been aggressive enough. Sullivan claims that this poll demonstrates there’s “no reason for tough talk.” Putting aside the fact that an eight point spread isn’t actually that dramatic -- and that the poll was presumably conducted before the IRGC and Basij began murdering people in cold blood on YouTube -- does Sullivan really think that the President of the United States should be guided by polling data on so sensitive and complex a foreign policy question as Iran?

It’s worth remembering, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, a substantial majority of Americans were in support of going to war to remove the threat from Saddam. Presumably Sullivan, in hindsight, thinks this was a mistake -- although he of course was an early and enthusiastic cheerleader for the invasion at the time. Likewise, a solid majority of Americans were opposed to the surge when President Bush announced it in January 2007. Presumably Sullivan, in hindsight, accepts that the vox populi got this one wrong too -- as did he, incidentally.

There are many sober and serious arguments that defenders of the president’s approach to the Iranian demonstrations can put forward. The fact that U.S. public opinion narrowly backs him isn’t one of them. A suggestion for Scott Rasmussen though: How about a poll asking Americans whether they would invite an Iranian diplomat to their own Fourth of July barbecue -- and whether they want the President of the United States to issue such an invitation in their names.

Democratic advocates of a government run health insurance option are touting a New York Times poll released over the weekend as more evidence of public support for their pet idea.

In a front page article on Saturday, the paper blared this news based on its new survey:

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

With this kind of support, why wait? Impatience with American policymakers spread to the U.K., where experts like this say it’s time for some “headbanging” on healthcare.

Just do it!

But there’s a pesky little problem. Seems that when you ask a poll question that only touts the benefits of a public policy change (like creating a government-run health care option) you get one answer. But when it’s posed in a little different way, the results shift a lot. Case in point. There is far less support for the government run plan when pollsters explain the positives and the negatives in a more fairly worded poll question.

This health care survey, released by Resurgent Republic (full disclosure, I am on the group’s academic advisory board), does a much better job of laying out both sides of the argument on the government plan option, as well as a host of other health policy questions.

A recent Kaiser poll finds a similar type of shift in attitude toward a government run insurance plan when new information is introduced.

The bottom line: Americans support many of the goals of reforming “the system,” but don’t want the government to mess with their own health care. Covering more people sounds good in theory, as long as it doesn’t mean raising taxes, increasing the deficit, and changing what people already have. This is all a prescription for a lot of volatility in polling on reforming the health care system.

A closer analysis of the NYT’s poll sample by Resurgent Republic’s Whit Ayres also reveals this shocker: A significant Democratic bias. The poll asked respondents who they voted for in the 2008 election. The results in the Times survey: A 29 point margin for Barack Obama over John McCain. As pollsters we always see a drift toward the winner in recalled responses to the “how did you vote” question. But a 29-point “drift” is more like a big-time Democratic bias in these results – another reason why an already the Times’s already prejudiced question on the government run plan tilts heavily in the pro-Democratic direction.

In an interview broadcast on CBS’s The Early Show Monday morning, President Obama was asked about his administration’s response to the protests in Iran. “The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States,” Obama said.

Obama added, “We shouldn't be playing into that.”

Of course, the regime is going to blame the U.S., UK and the West anyway. The regime’s standard playbook calls for trying “to make this an argument about the United States.” The regime has already called that play.

From MEMRI, here is how Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative in Syria explained the protests:

“What happened in this case was that the U.S. and the West were expecting the presidency to be transferred to an element with whom they perhaps felt more at ease. They viewed this as an opportunity to exert pressure on the Islamic Republic. Therefore, behind the scenes of everything that is going on, one sees the same people who have been lying in wait for the Islamic Republic. Check out the foreign news agencies, as well as the foreign ministers of England, the U.S., and some other Western countries. They do not bear goodwill towards the Islamic Republic.”

And then Iranian spokesman Hassan Qashqavi, who sounds an awful lot like Baghdad Bob, branded the protests “instances of media, security and political warfare.” From Washington TV:

Qashqavi said that “despite the internationally recognized norms of many European countries and America,” rather than inviting people to use “democratic means and emphasizing lawful means”, Western countries support “rioters.”

Saying that Iranians have high democratic capabilities for solving problems, Qashqavi added that the promotion of “anarchism and vandalism [previous word in English]” by Western powers and media had no effect.

He criticized Western officials for not saying “even one sentence about inviting people to be calm”, and said: “In presidential contests between Al Gore, and [former president George W.] Bush as well as the election between [US Senator John] Kerry and Bush, incidents took place, but no one incited the people of America.”

That’s right, what is going on inside Iran right now is comparable to the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections, except there were no meddlesome outside powers pulling the strings on American protesters. If you believe that then you probably believe the 12th Imam will reappear any minute now too.

The newspaper of record explains why it’s just so hard for the president and his advisers to know how to react to events in Iran:

. . . the paucity of information from Iran adds another layer of complexity to Mr. Obama’s challenge as he wrestles with how to respond publicly to the crackdown on demonstrators and weighs what it means for his effort to engage the Iranian government on its nuclear program.

Oh, we get it now, it’s because they have to rely on the same news the rest of us are hearing.

Jen Rubin has an exclusive story at Pajamas Media that should horrify every law-abiding American: the Department of Justice is seeking volunteers for the “unique opportunity” of manning a booth at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Convention, which will take place in Washington, D.C. over the July 4th weekend. As Jen notes, the Investigative Project on Terrorism describes ISNA thus:

ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-support prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which ended in the conviction of five former HLF officials on 108 counts. Federal prosecutors identified ISNA as a “member organization” of the “U.S. Muslim Brotherhood” on its list of Unindicted Co-conspirators and/or Joint Venturers.

Will we hear angry calls from Democrats in Congress and elsewhere for investigations of this amazing decision? Jen hasn’t yet received a reply from DOJ to her query about it. Watch for further developments on both counts. But don’t hold your breath.

While the regime murders its own people in the streets, the Obama administration reassures Iranian diplomats that they're still welcome at Fourth of July barbecues at U.S. embassies across the world -- it's all good:

"There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

"We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran," Kelly said. "We tried many years of isolation, and we're pursuing a different path now."

Via Allahpundit.

From a CNN interview this morning with a man described by CNN as an Iranian student protester in Tehran:

Mohammad: Americans, European Union, international community, this government is not definitely — is definitely not elected by the majority of Iranians. So it’s illegal. Do not recognize it. Stop trading with them. Impose much more sanctions against them. My message…to the international community, especially I’m addressing President Obama directly – how can a government that doesn’t recognize its people’s rights and represses them brutally and mercilessly have nuclear activities? This government is a huge threat to global peace. Will a wise man give a sharp dagger to an insane person? We need your help international community. Don’t leave us alone.

Chetry: Mohammad, what do you think the international community should do besides sanctions?

Mohammad: Actually, this regime is really dependent on importing gasoline. More than 85% of Iran’s gasoline is imported from foreign countries. I think international communities must sanction exporting gasoline to Iran and that might shut down the government.

But wouldn't that make the United States a political football inside Iran and destroy the legitimacy of the protest movement by portraying it as a pawn of the Great Satan? Someone had better tell Mohammad that he really doesn't understand the internal dynamics of the complex society he lives in -- and that one strongly worded statement from the President of the United States could doom his dream of living in a peaceful and democratic country.

His wife, security detail, and staff haven't seen him since Thursday. What in the world is going on here?

Sanford’s last known whereabouts were near Atlanta, where a mobile telephone tower picked up a signal from his phone, authorities said.

His wife says she is unconcerned, and foul play is not suspected:

She said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

The governor’s office issued a statement Monday afternoon: "Gov. Sanford is taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle and the legislative session, and to work on a couple of projects that have fallen by the wayside.

"We are not going to discuss the specifics of his travel arrangements or his security arrangements.

State Sen. Jake Knotts, a longtime Sanford critic, is the first named source on the story, so this may be a case of a political opponent blowing it out of proportion for political gain, but it does seem an odd way of doing business. Hopefully all will turn out fine.

In 2002, Sanford declined his security during his transition for cost-savings reasons.

An Iranian photojournalist who was getting powerful images of protesters from places other journalists could not or would not tread is missing. From LIFE:

A NOTE TO OUR READERS: We are saddened to report that the Iranian photojournalist, whose pictures appear in this gallery, is missing. He has not been in contact with us; this morning we received the following email from one of his relatives. We will update this space when we have more details. THE EMAIL: Hi im [photographer’s relative], when he go out side yester day for he never came back home and also his friend and a lot of our young brave people, government arrested them [. . .] don’t let them suffer in those bloody hands. With thanks.

You can see the photographer's slideshow at the link.

An update from Tehran Bureau on Twitter— one of the frequently referenced Twitter sources for Iranian news—on the atmosphere in Iran today, where crackdowns by riot police have reportedly cut down on the crowd numbers:

from Tehran: "They have cordened off about 20 metres of road in Vanak Square, I was there at 7pm tonight." cont.

They are stopping and searching cars and peoples bags. They are taking peoples ID cards and cameras." end quote

A note from Tehran: police/basij pulling cars over to inspect at checkpoints... they will seize any cameras along with the owner's ID card

pls be careful and keep your cameras at home -- or well-hidden ... ! [end quote]

While the Iranian people took to the streets last week to confront their tyrannical regime, S. 908 -- the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, introduced two months ago by Sens. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), Evan Bayh (D-IN), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) -- was picking up steam on the Hill. As of Friday, the legislation -- which would empower the president to impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran -- picked up its 60th and 61st cosponsor in the Senate. The bill is now officially filibuster-proof. Impressively, support for the bill remains firmly bipartisan, with 31 Democrats and 30 Republicans on board.

The Connecticut senator with a 50+ unfavorable rating, a sweetheart mortgage problem, and a challenger who is leading in the polls, probably didn't need this from the president. Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni reports, via her Twitter account:

Obama accidentally calls his one-time rival "Rep. Dodd" @ Rose Garden event. Dodd responds, "Things are tough enough!"

Cue the Rob Simmons web ad any minute now.

Oh, dear. Chris will be so ashamed, he'll have to run off to his Irish "cottage" to pout.

I'm sure that's the question our readers were asking as they watched events unfold in Tehran, and thanks to the communications revolution, Twitter gives us an answer:

Considering how well fighting 4 freedom in Iraq went, I dont know that we should B jumping in2 this Iran deal. I think that truly the only people that can change things in Iran are the Iranians themselves and they seem to be speaking their minds now.

One blogger responds:

Hmm. Should we B jumping in2 this? I thought so be4 but now 404. I’d like to hear what Drew Barrymore has to say about Iran before I make up my mind. Drew, ?4U. Srs Bzns. I’m sending a reminder kitty kat so you don’t forget. =^..^=

North Korea threatens the United States of America. But we’re not worried, because President Obama warns the Norks via CBS that “the T’s are crossed and all the I’s are dotted in terms of what might happen.” Harry Smith briefly departs from drooling MSM slavishness to argue with him, albeit weakly, pointing out that “They’re still defiant.” The president assures us that having the entire U.N. Security Council “willing to impose tougher sanctions” is a powerful weapon, and there’s a

. . . unity in the international community that we haven't seen in quite some time. And one of the things that we have been very clear about is that North Korea has a path towards rejoining the international community. And we hope they take that path. What we're not going to do is to reward belligerence and provocation in the way that's been done in the past.

What does he mean by not rewarding “belligerence and provocation in the way that’s been done in the past”? Is he criticizing the Bush administration for not having gone far enough with Pyongyang in the Six-Party Talks? What can he offer them that’s worse than that unconscionable appeasement? And why does he keep repeating the “sanctions of international unity” mantra, when the whole world knows what the Norks know about that?

And what are those T’s and those I’s? Does he plan to wield them against Iran, too? Because while we’re “witnessing peaceful demonstrations, people expressing themselves, and I stand for that universal principle that people should have a voice in their own lives and their own destiny,” as he tells Pakistan’s Dawn Newspaper, Iran has begun war games in the gulf, including "long-distance flights of around 3,600 km (2,237 miles) along with aerial refuelling from tanker to fighter jet and from fighter jet to fighter jet.”

Meanwhile, though unwilling to declare the Iranian election either fair or not fair (no international observers), he hopes “that the international community recognises that we need to stand behind peaceful protests and be opposed to violence or repression.”

But beyond the election, what’s clear is that the Iranian people are wanting to express themselves. And it is critical, as they seek justice and they seek an opportunity to express themselves, that that’s respected and not met with violence.

Respected? There’s blood running in the streets of Tehran. How long can he go on threatening what’s left of the axis of evil with the disapprobation of the “international community” --"the world is watching"-- before he gets us bit??

The AP reports:

The Supreme Court has upheld a federal government permit to dump waste from an Alaskan gold mine into a nearby lake, even though all its fish would be killed.

By a 6-3 vote Monday, the justices say a federal appeals court wrongly blocked the permit on environmental grounds.

A friend emails:

Alaska only has 3 million lakes, you know. And while the "lake" in question does have a few non-special fish, it is little more than a muskeg pond. Once the project is complete it will be a beautiful lake with lots of fish.

The 9th Circuit's 3-judge panel that ruled against the Kensington was comprised of one Carter and 2 Clinton appointees. Elections do indeed have consequences.

President Obama told a Pakistani newspaper that he is not sure whether the elections in Iran are fair:

"Obama told Pakistan's English-language "Dawn" newspaper in an interview published on June 21 that the United States has no way of knowing whether the election at the heart of the Iranian crisis--which official figures awarded to incumbent President Mahmud Ahmadinejad by a wide margin over his closest competitor, Mir Hossein Musavi--was fair or not, AP reported."

On its face, this is absurd. The elections were not fair. To start with, the candidates had to be chosen by the Ayatollah in order to run in the first place. No matter the outcome from Iran, be it Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, the United States should not have recognized the election results. But now that citizens in Iran are pushing for a fair electoral process, through mass protest, there should be no question: We must stand in favor of freedom.

On “The Early Show” this morning, Obama said that “what we can do is bear witness and say--to the world that the, you know, incredible demonstrations that we’ve seen is a testimony to--I think what Dr. King called the--the arc of the moral universe. It’s long but it bends towards justice.”

Perhaps this is so, but Martin Luther King didn't “bear witness” to the civil rights movement in America--he was a courageous participant. Obama now has a choice: Will he be a courageous participant or a weak witness? Will he declare that the elections in Iran were rigged, or will he continue to say that he does not know?

Barack Obama ran for president in part to try to restore America's moral standing in the world. His inability so far to recognize fair elections from rigged indicates that, if anything, we are losing our moral standing in the world.

A common complaint among Catholics is the lack of mystery and sense of awe when it comes to mass. Between the modern style of the church itself, the New Dawn music (“Though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust!”), and the bright lights, mass can become downright pedestrian. This has led some priests to take action: Dim the lights, add more candles, break out the incense. But there is only so much one can do.

I thought about other ways a church can revive that sense of awe and mystery as I sat through a mass at the Church of St. Thomas in the Malastranska neighborhood of Prague. (I’m here under the auspices of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and will report on the latest on Iran after meeting the hardworking folks at Radio Farda in a few minutes.) But looking around, I realized no parish would have the money to build golden altars and tabernacles and paintings on the ceiling. But there is one thing I noticed that any church could do and would go a long way to restoring that sense of wonderment:

Glass coffins. You heard me. I noticed two such coffins prominently displayed at St. Thomas. Inside were the bodies of holy men draped in period clothing (I was unable to find out their identities). You couldn’t see actual flesh and bone (or most likely bone) because they were covered from head to toe. Each wore a face mask (one had faded to almost black, the other was gold-colored and reminded me of Destro). I found myself staring at both of these men the entire time. So why can’t we have more glass coffins at our local churches? And when you bring the kids (as David Skinner recently wrote about in THE WEEKLY STANDARD), you could sit them right in front of these bodies (the ones in St. Thomas were posed on their sides, so they are facing you). I guarantee your children won’t be a disruption at mass anymore. (Well, maybe except for their screams of terror.)

Check out this sharp analysis from the MSNBC crew:

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro
*** Ramping up the rhetoric: As the violence and protests escalated in Iran on Saturday, President Obama stepped up his criticism about what’s happening there. “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” he said in a statement. “We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.” But the toughest domestic political rhetoric on Iran is coming from Republicans. This is one of those cases where Democrats and the White House are wondering what the reaction would be if the roles were reversed -- i.e., Democrats criticizing a GOP administration’s response on foreign policy. Indeed, Republicans regularly beat up Democrats for supposedly politicizing international issues (do remember that the establishment Democratic Party didn’t start truly criticizing the situation in Iraq until two-plus years after the war began). But who’s politicizing now? Also, it's worth noting that the criticism from Republicans is NOT universal. In fact, the GOP establishment on this issue is more divided than the coverage is suggesting.

I wish it was harder to imagine Chuck Todd writing this kind of thing with a straight face, but liberals seem to be genuinely outraged that anyone would dare criticize a sitting president on matters of foreign policy and national security. Never mind that in 2002, before the war even began, Barack Obama was calling it an attempt by the Bush administration "to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats.... A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics." Fair enough, I guess he wasn't part of the "Democratic establishment" in 2002, but how about John Kerry, in April 2003, calling for "not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." Maybe if Republicans used the president's own rhetoric to attack him the MSNBC crew would be more comfortable.

Republicans must bear witness to the weakness of this White House. Barack Obama must know that the world is watching -- and waiting -- for him to do something, anything, besides eat ice cream and play golf. The arc of the president's drive is long, but it bends toward the sand trap of history.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the German firm's shady dealings with the Iranian regime, which included helping the country develop "one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale."

This story was even more shocking the first time I read it in the Washington Times.

What makes these protests in Iran so different from ones in the past is that the Revolutionary Guard and other police and security forces had previously been able to step in and successfully repress the demonstrators—to the point of deterring such activities from happening in the first place. Not so this time around. According to Mehrdad Mirdamadi, a broadcaster with Radio Farda, “the Iranian people have crossed a threshold of fear and terror. For the last 30 years, these barriers [consisting of executions of reformers in the 1980s and assassinations in the 1990s] kept the people in place.”

But now they are out on the streets and there is no going back. One reason for this emboldened attitude is the belief that there is a split among the elites, among the conservative establishment. “If the split widens,” says Mirdamadi, “expect real changes to be seen.” Of equal importance, he says, is the role played by the military and the police, which has been reluctant compared with the plainclothes Basij militia, who are perpetrating most of the killings. “The Revolutionary Guard today” still remembers the revolution of 1979 and thinks, “how can they turn their guns on their own people?”

There have even been reports of officers being arrested for not carrying out their orders. If such refusals continue, the Revolutionary Council will have a serious problem on its hands. (Mirdamadi was until a few months ago a journalist and sociologist in Iran. His byline appeared in both the Washington Post and the New York Times. He wishes he were covering the protests directly from Tehran. I told him that while Prague might be boring for him, it is certainly safer. Except for those subway escalators which seem to travel 50 miles per hour.)

Editor's note: The video below is making the rounds and seems to illustrate well the inability of security forces to intimidate the people.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has urged the ruling regime in Tehran to allow a full recount of the disputed presidential elections of June 12. “Germany sides with those Iranians who want to exercise their right to freedom of expression and assembly”, Merkel declared on Sunday; making it one of the strongest messages sent by any Western leader to Iran so far. Chancellor Merkel also called on Tehran to allow peaceful demonstrations, to refrain from using force against protestors, and to release imprisoned opposition figures. “Human and civil rights have to be fully respected,” she stated. Merkel further demanded that restrictions placed on foreign media covering the widespread protests across Tehran and the rest of the country be lifted.

AEI's IranTracker posts a call for a general strike in Iran on Tuesday for "all workers and government and non-government workers, except workers of hospitals, health centers and fire-fighting agencies." The letter is posted with the disclaimer that the site's editors can't vouch for its authenticity (and that the source wishes to remain anonymous), but the call purports to come from the News Agency of Students Supporting the Civil Movement in Iran and says that "students and university workers are also requested to cooperate with us by dismissing universities on this day."

Read the full text of the letter here.

Washington Times editor Barbara Slavin writes to Steve Clemons:

steve, iran ceased being an islamic republic a week ago. now it's just another military dictatorship.

Clemons concurs without hesitation. It's ironic then that Obama became the first American president to say otherwise just three months ago when he taped a new year's message to "the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran." He referred to the country twice as an "Islamic Republic." It was jarring for many to hear a U.S. president refer to the Iranian regime by its formal name. Kristol wrote in the pages of this magazine that in doing so President Obama was "kowtowing to a regime that is anything but republican, implicitly forswearing any plan--any hope--of regime change to free the Iranian people."

Indeed, this administration had no plan or hope of regime change, but suddenly it is faced with the very real possibility that the regime will fall. And yet President Obama is still stubbornly clinging to a policy of engagement and normalization even as State Department officials privately concede that the "chances for meaningful engagement with Khamenei regime have been set back considerably." So will Obama continue to refer to Iran as an Islamic Republic? Will he continue to persist in a policy of engagement no matter the crimes committed by those who would sit on the other side of the table? Or will Obama seize the chance to be on the right side of history?

From Poilitico44 (and note this has been posted since well before today's statement by the president, which one can at least argue is tough on Iran):

The most dramatic video to emerge from Iran today can be seen below and comes with a strong content warning:

Here's the story behind it:

At 19:05 June 20th
Place: Karekar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st.

A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim's chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes.
The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St.
The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me.
Please let the world know.

While the Basij has been out for days, there are now numerous reports that the IRGC has entered the fray. One of the most popular twitter feeds coming out of Iran reports on a running street battle today: "they weren't just the ordinary police or motorcycle riot guard, they were soldiers holding MP5 supported by reinforced military cars...I think I saw 2 or 3 people lying on the ground in blood & IRG started to move them, probably hide them."

Dan Senor and Christian Whiton write for Time:

As for the notion that American silence is unhelpful to reformers, this simply contradicts historical experience. Successful movements to alter authoritarian and totalitarian regimes almost always depend on internal dissent backed by strong international support. Those key factors are often required to get a regime's enablers — including domestic security forces — to lose confidence and eventually succumb.

Time and again and around the world — from as recently as Tibet in 2008, to Egypt in 2005, to Tiananmen in 1989 — the prospects of reform dim considerably without international support. In fact, we know of no modern democratic evolution or revolution that has succeeded without some support and pressure from the west.

Senor and Whiton say that "even if we cannot know or control the outcome, we have a responsibility, through our actions as a nation, to answer clearly the question: whose side are we on?" It's the same point that Hayes and Kristol make with a 200-year-old quote from Daniel Webster in this week's editorial:

In 1823, first-term congressman Daniel Webster spoke up in support of the Greek revolution. Responding to critics who said that mere rhetorical support would do the revolutionaries no good, Webster said: "I hope it may. It may give them courage and spirit. It may assure them of public regard, teach them that they are not wholly forgotten by the civilized world, and inspire them with constancy in the pursuit of their great end."

And in any case, Webster continued, support for those fighting for freedom abroad was "due to our own character, and called for by our own duty."

CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller has been doing some in-depth reporting on the president's trip to an ice cream parlor this afternoon. He reports that "Obama had vanilla frozen custard in a cup with hot fudge and toasted almonds." He reports that "Sasha had a Brownie sundae: vanilla frozen yogurt, hot fudge, cherry, sprinkles and whipped cream (which she asked Dad to scrape off)." He reports that "Malia had vanilla frozen custart in a waffle cone." And, "You're gonna laff: Obama & the girls actually bought Frozen Puppy pops for Bo: flavors: pumpkin, peanut butter and yogurt…"

When some twitterers complained that maybe President Obama's time could be better spent given the crisis in Iran, Knoller responded, "Surprised by the outrage at the ice cream outing. What is it you expect or want the US to do about Iran? Attack? War?"

An update from Radio Farda:

- People have started to chant " Aloha Akbar" from roof tops.

- Our Hot Bird Satellite is totally jammed in Iran . We are using three different sat. to reach our audience.

- Confirmed reports say security forces are following demonstrators to the nearby houses and breaking into the houses to arrest people. In some cases they have used tear gas to bring people out of the houses. Extensive use of force by plain clothed groups and special anti riot forces.

- We expect massive arrests over the night.

The White House released a paper statement from President Obama this afternoon, for the first time calling directly on the Iranian regime to "stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people."

Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

Good for him.

There have been two pieces of Palau and Uighur-related news since yesterday. The first was a New York Times op-ed by Stuart Beck, the South Pacific island of Palau’s representative to the United Nations. The second comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reports that at least some of the 13 remaining Uighurs at Gitmo don’t want to go to Palau.

Four of the Uighur’s compatriots were recently transferred to Bermuda, which certainly has a superior nightlife to the relatively isolated and poor Palau. You would think the lack of a hopping nightlife in Palau is the real reason behind the Uighur jihadists’ reticence, but no. The Journal says the Uighurs, according to Obama administration officials, “have concerns about the lack of a Uighur community in Palau, and restrictions on becoming a citizen there.”

We have apparently arrived at a point where the Uighurs -- who have been rejected by “more than 100 nations” -- are being picky about their final destination.

Meanwhile, Stuart Beck is concerned about how the media has portrayed his nation’s agreement to take in some of the Uighurs held at Gitmo. Beck says that media reports suggesting Palau is receiving nearly $12 million in aid per Uighur are false. Palau has been in talks with the Obama administration about renewing its new aid package, Beck says, and Palau’s willingness to accept a number of Uighurs is not part of some quid pro quo.

As Beck himself notes, the initial reporting on the Uighurs-for-cash deal came from the Associated Press. The AP cited two anonymous State Department officials in the Obama administration as saying that the Uighurs’ transfer was contingent upon Palau receiving $200 million in aid. $200 million in aid divided by 17 Uighurs gives you the $12 million per Uighur figure that Beck says is wrong.

That has clearly changed since the AP’s account first ran. Four of the 17 Uighurs have been transferred to Bermuda, so Palau isn’t taking all 17 Uighurs. And now Beck says that the $200 million figure has never been discussed. Beck says the Obama administration has “offered to pay relocation costs for the Uighurs of less than $90,000 per person” and “no one has even hinted at linking the [aid] deal to Palau’s acceptance of the Uighurs.”

Perhaps. The aid package is probably not intended to directly compensate Palau for its hospitality towards the Uighurs. But it is hard to believe that the aid package did not affect Palau’s willingness to accept the Uighurs in the first place. Beck notes that negotiations over the amount of aid Palau will receive are ongoing because the existing package runs out later this year. That makes it even more appealing for Palau to find a way to please the Obama administration, especially after more than 100 other nations turned down the administration’s request.

And here is how Beck says the Obama team explained the situation to his government:

President Obama, much admired in Palau, asked our new president, Johnson Toribiong, to do the United States a favor: Please accept, as refugees, a group of innocent Chinese Muslims. They are not anti-American terrorists, but victims of human rights violations, who landed at Guantánamo Bay for seven years. Innocent, stateless, harmless.

Did Obama, or his surrogates, really describe the Uighurs detained at Gitmo in this manner? Did someone in the administration tell Palau’s president that they are “innocent,” “harmless,” “victims of human rights violations”?

If so, this is hardly an accurate representation.

A more accurate representation of the Uighurs detained at Gitmo would have started by pointing out that all of them are members or associates of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (“ETIM”), or its successor organization, the Turkistan Islamic Party (“TIP”). The ETIM/TIP has been designated an al Qaeda affiliate by both the UN and the United States.
The Obama team should have explained that at least eight of the Uighurs have also admitted that they were trained by Abdul Haq, who has been designated an al Qaeda terrorist and a member of al Qaeda’s elite Shura council by Obama’s own Treasury Department.

The Obama team should have also pointed out that nearly all of them trained at an ETIM camp in Tora Bora. And some of them have had severe behavioral problems at Gitmo too -- including one instance in which a Uighur detained threw a television because a woman’s bare arms were shown. Such is the radical nature of their beliefs.

Certainly in this new era of transparency, the Obama team would have explained all of that to Palau.

If I had any doubt about the need for a tougher approach to Iran, this has relieved me of it:

“It’s an ironic moment in history when I say I agree with Pat Buchanan, but I agree with Pat Buchanan,” McCaskill said. “The president is being very smart and strategic here. Sometimes it’s more important to use a velvet glove than to pound your chest and in this instance the reformers are going to be more effective if no one senses they’re being driven by the west.”

France continues to take a firmer stand on Iran than Obama.

Sotomayor quits all-women's club.

Al Sharpton to meet with freed Uighurs.

To comply with Heller decision, D.C. will permit residents to obtain "1,000 additional types and models of handguns that had previously been banned."

Goldfarb talks to True Slant's Kate Klonick about Mousavi.

The GOP whip's office sends around this report from the Hill:

House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) on Friday said climate change bill negotiators are heading back to the drawing board after discussions between Democrats “blew up last night.”

A meeting between chairmen drafting the climate bill and Democrats on the Agriculture Committee “by and large blew up last night” over the issue of offsets, Peterson said.

Specifically, he said, Agriculture Democrats rejected a concept pitched by bill drafters that would set money aside for a new greenhouse gas conservation program tied together with some offsets.

“It’s a whole new concept being brought in at the last minute,” Peterson said. “Many didn’t like it. ... The bottom line is we’re not going to consider anything unless we actually see the language and have it for three or four days so we can figure out what it does.”...

Added Peterson, “I’m tired of this running around in circles.”

The deal was supposed to be announced Wednesday and the bill was supposed to come out of committee today, but that obviously isn't going to happen. There are eight committees with jurisdiction over this cap and trade bill, which runs some 986 pages last I heard. Only two committees have actually marked up the bill, owing to pressure from Pelosi and Waxman to get it done before health care sucks up all the air, but one of those committees is Agriculture, and Peterson isn't playing ball. He represents a coalition of Blue Dog and moderate Dems who largely represent districts in the South and the Midwest, where there is a much greater dependence on fossil fuels (for electricity generation), manufacturing, and agriculture, and where there is little demand for a massive new tax on energy. In contrast, the Democrats running this issue -- Waxman, Markey, and Pelosi -- all hail from the coasts, where priorities are a little different.

Peterson says he can bring about 40 Dems against this bill, which would be enough to kill it. And that's almost certainly true so long as the bill looks like it's going to die in the Senate. If moderate Dems in the House are looking at the health care fiasco in the Senate right now, they're probably thinking cap and trade doesn't stand a chance -- so why take a tough vote on this disaster of a bill (which not a single member of the House has actually read so far as anyone can tell), if it's never going to move in the Senate anyway.

The Financial Times recently provided an interesting ranking of the 25 “most liveable” cities world-wide. At the top of the list in 2009 is Zurich, Switzerland, followed by Copenhagen and Tokyo. Compiled by Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief of global-affairs-lifestyle magazine Monocle, the ranking is based on a wide variety of factors, ranging from average salaries, school performance, healthcare costs, physical and technological connectivity, tolerance, the vibrancy of a city’s media and culture scene, as well as late-night eating, entertainment, and shopping options. In 2009, several new metrics were added to the mix for the first time, including a city’s business climate and the quality of its public transport / infrastructure system. As Tyler Brûlé summed things up: “In our view, places with the best quality of life are those with the fewest daily obstructions, allowing residents to be both productive and free of unnecessary stress.”

Josh Kraushaar reports on some good news for Marco Rubio, who's challenging Gov. Charlie Crist in the 2010 GOP Senate primary:

Rubio won overwhelming support from Republican party leaders in Pasco County (around Tampa-St. Petersburg), which neighbors Crist’s home base of Pinellas County.

Rubio received 73 votes to Crist’s 9 votes in a countywide straw poll of the Senate primary.

That's a blow to Crist, who was endorsed by the country GOP when he faced a competitive primary in 2006. And it's consistent with the (anecdotal) gripes of many prominent conservative activists throughout the Sunshine State.

I posted earlier on the increasingly paranoid and anti-Semitic writings of Andrew Sullivan, and now his colleague at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, has keyed in on the same disturbing post. Goldberg is obviously troubled by the not-so-subtle insinuations Sullivan continues to make about AIPAC and neocons and supporters of Israel, but he doesn't seem eager to probe too deeply. Goldberg also gets a response from Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt to Sullivan's charge that he is controlled by the "neocons." Hiatt says, "It is so incoherent, it's hard to know how to comment." But comment he does, and you'll be shocked to learn that AIPAC wasn't at the center of a Zionist conspiracy to muzzle Dan Froomkin.

Update: Karl reminds twitterers of another Goldberg statement on Sullivan's recent evolution: "I wish Andrew would go back to bashing the Jew-baiters, rather than reveling in their smears."

The White House says that the House resolution on Iran is "very consistent" with the message coming from the president this week. But, nobody really believes that. The White House worked to tone down the House resolution and turn it into something that would not embarrass the White House by demonstrating how out of touch the president is on this issue relative to Congress. And then Ron Paul, the only person to vote against the House resolution, explained that he did so because he "admired President Obama’s cautious approach to the situation in Iran and I would have preferred that we in the House had acted similarly."

And now the Senate has passed a similar resolution prompting this statement from Senators McCain and Lieberman:

The time has come for the United States Congress to speak out unequivocally in support of the fundamental right of the Iranian people to determine their future for themselves in freedom,” said Senators McCain and Lieberman. “With this resolution, the Senate joined with our colleagues in the House of Representatives to affirm our shared commitment to the universal values of democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law, and to condemn the unacceptable violence against the peaceful demonstrators taking place in Iran. By acting now, Congress sent an unmistakable message of support to the courageous Iranian people at a critical moment in their history.”

Either McCain, Lieberman, Ron Paul, and the entire Democratic caucus in the House are confused about what this resolution says or the White House is. Read the resolution and decide for yourself, and note the presence of the word "condemn," which the president and his spokesmen have so far refused to utter, and the absence of the word "debate."

Yesterday both the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Cesar Perales, the president and general counsel of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), asking him "to provide documents related to [Sonia Sotomayor's] membership" in that organization.

Sotomayor served on the board of directors for PRLDEF 1980–1992 and is described by the New York Times as being a “top policy maker” for the organization. PRLDEF has a collection of memos and board materials at Hunter College in New York which THE WEEKLY STANDARD's sources have reviewed, but the documents abruptly end around 1987. A source went to New York earlier this month and spoke with a member of the organization's communications staff regarding Sotomayor post-1987 materials. The PRLDEF member said that documents from 1987-1992 would not be made available to anyone, including the press, the Senate, or the White House. The PRLDEF employee also indicated that “people are already upset with us for releasing the Hunter College documents” and that the rest of the collection would remain under lock and key at a warehouse in New Jersey.

One reason PRLDEF and Sotomayor supporters might be upset about the release of any additional documents is that Sotomayor’s 1981 memo on the death penalty has already attracted negative attention for Sotomayor's controversial claim that “capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society” and that “our present perspective on the meaning of our values in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the state of humanistic thinking in the world judge capital punishment as a violation of those values.” Sotomayor did not originally include the memo in her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, but later added it after it was discovered by judicial interest groups.

However, it now seems that Sotomayor has access to the records, considering she gave the judiciary committee four additional memos this week from PRLDEF, two from 1987 and two from 1988. So what is the PRLDEF hiding -- and will they comply with the request from the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Full letter from Leahy and Sessions after the jump...

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his first public statement today on the week-long protest sparked by the fraudulent electoral victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He blamed “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for fueling divisions in Iran. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan -- who writes today of "the Khamenei-Neocon agreement" -- yesterday asserted that the Washington Post was publishing "op-eds peddling dishonest partial numbers to buttress Ahmadinejad, because that's what the neocons wanted." And just in case you think Sullivan might not necessarily be using the term neocon as a substitute for Zionist, he helpfully clears up any confusion by referring to the paper's op-ed page as "hackneyed AIPAC boilerplate." So while Sullivan and Khamenei may disagree over what end the Jews seek through their nefarious control of the media, they both understand what the real threat is.

Egypt’s state-run newspaper Al-Ahram yesterday took the “international community” to task for its cautious response to the Iranian uprising.

Between the mass demonstrations [of the reformists] decrying electoral fraud, and the counter-demonstrations accusing the reformists of allegiance to the West, the international community has stood confused about what position to take towards this democratic outpouring. . . . The caution that has characterized the position of the principle international actors towards the abuses occurring in the streets of Iran, up to and including the killing [of protesters], may be sending the wrong message to the ruling powers there.

“Democratic outpouring?” From a newspaper wholly owned by a man who routinely uses violence against democratic outpourings in his own country and receives nearly nearly 90 percent of the vote--that's so much better than Ahmadinejad's measly 63 percent--when he runs for president?

Hah! That’s the most shameless piece of editorializing since the ayatollacracy’s apologist-in-chief Roger Cohen had the chutzpah to complain Monday in the New York Times that “Millions of defrauded Iranians are thirsting for a little more” from the United States government than the “off-key” “air of business as usual at the White House.”

Here are Democratic congressman Howard Berman's remarks, as delivered on the House floor this morning during debate on the resolution he cosponsored with Rep. Pence to support Iranian dissidents:

Chairman Berman’s remarks on H.Res. 560, expressing support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties and rule of law

Mr. Speaker, every day since Iran’s election, the streets of Tehran have been filled with demonstrators, and each day this past week, the number seems to be growing.

Even state-run media in Iran has put the number of demonstrators in Tehran at “hundreds of thousands.” One British newspaper reports that there were a million demonstrators in Tehran yesterday.

What do these demonstrators want? Are they simply in favor of the candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi? Or are they making a more profound statement about the Iranian regime?

Nobody knows exactly. We do know one thing, though: The demonstrators feel their intelligence was insulted and their dignity assaulted by the high-handed manner in which the results of the June 12 election were handled. They want justice – this morning, the Supreme Leader offered none.

It is not for us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12th election.

But we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely, and without intimidation.

The Iranian regime is clearly embarrassed by the demonstrations and has not shrunk from using violence to stop them. At least eight demonstrators – and quite likely, a number more – have been killed and hundreds have been injured.

The Regime has also tried to ban media coverage of the demonstrations. Foreign journalists are consigned to their homes and offices; several have been expelled from the country.

Cell-phone coverage has been frequently blocked in order to limit communication among the protestors. And the regime has interfered with the Internet and taken down many opposition Web sites.

We cannot stand silent in the face of this assault on human freedom and dignity.

I repeat that we have no interest in interfering in Iran’s internal affairs. That era has ended.

This resolution “affirms the universality of individual rights,” as well as “the importance of democratic and fair elections.” Beyond that, it simply expresses its solidarity with “Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law.”

I don’t know how many of the demonstrators fall into that category, but I do know that many of them do.

This resolution also condemns the bloody suppression of freedom.

It is not a judgment on who won the Iranian elections. It is an acknowledgement that we cannot remain silent when cherished, universal principles are under attack.

Mr. Speaker, I want to just offer my appreciation to our ranking member and to the gentleman from Indiana for working together on a resolution which puts the House of Representatives on the side of the people of Iran. And with that, I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) introduced the following resolution:

Expressing support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law, and for other purposes.

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law;

(2) condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the Government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cellphones; and

(3) affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.

The House just voted to pass it by an overwhelming margin 405 to 1. Ron Paul was the lone "no" vote, with two voting present and 25 not voting.

From today's Krauthammer column:

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, President Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

The left can imagine that the decision by President Obama to remain neutral in this "vigorous debate" the Iranian people are now having is a wise one, that it will prevent the demonstrators from being tainted by American support. But on Krauthammer's core point, that our fundamental values demand action and support for those who oppose this regime whether or not it does them a disservice, there is really no argument. The idea that the American government could remain impartial in this dispute and subsequently do business with the regime regardless of the manner in which it maintains power is a kind of absurd hyper-realism -- and it is rejected by the very dissidents in whose interest the left claims Obama is acting.

Conservatives are not calling on Obama to use military force to aid the demonstrators in Tehran. They do not expect Obama to provide these demonstrators with arms or money or training, as the Iranians have done for our enemies in Iraq. All conservatives are asking for is that the President of the United States clearly and forcefully denounce a regime that would use violence and intimidation and fraud to maintain its grip on power. It's possible that doing so could come at the cost of allowing the regime to justify a crackdown, but the inaction and indifference the White House now displays could also invite such a crackdown by signaling that the regime will pay no price for it. So why not just tell the truth?

U.S. Forces Afghanistan press release:

Afghan National Army Commandos, assisted by Coalition forces, uncovered a drug cache and captured two known militants during a search of an enemy fighter safe haven in Ghorak district, Kandahar province, June 17.

After receiving credible information regarding militant activity in the area, the forces searched a number of known militant and Taliban leader compounds. During their search, the friendly forces took into custody two men wanted for conducting illegal activities for the insurgency and Taliban, including coordinating attacks against ANSF and Coalition forces and trafficking weapons and narcotics. The Commandos also confiscated a supply of black-tar heroin during the search.

Several armed militants in the village were identified and eliminated after attacking friendly forces. There were no Afghan National Army, Coalition force or non-combatant casualties.

See Donnelly on the administration's dubious counternarcotics strategy here.

In a performance that may be remembered for years to come, Ayatollah Khamenei put on a show at this morning's prayers. The ayatollah said that not only were the elections legitimate, but that the "street challenge is not acceptable." He all but threatened Mousavi directly, saying: "I call on all to put an end to this method. ... If they don't, they will be held responsible for the chaos and the consequences."

What of the challenge to the regime's authority? "Some may imagine that street action will create political leverage against the system and force the authorities to give in to threats. No, this is wrong," Khamenei said.

And who is to blame for this unrest? America and the Zionists, of course.

The "evil media" belonging to "Zionists" is trying to draw into question Ahmadinejad's overwhelming victory, Khameini said. The 60-plus percent of the vote Ahmadinejad supposedly got was not suspicious, Khameini argued, but instead a sign of convincing victory.

"Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory...It is your victory. They cannot manipulate it."

Four observations:

First, keep an eye on the Revolutionary Guard, which has promised to stomp the opposition. We can only speculate on what the IRGC will be ordered to do at this point. There are unsubstantiated reports that the IRGC may be ready to deploy. Some reports suggest that IRGC commanders who are sympathetic to the protesters have been arrested. And the ayatollah's threats seem to indicate that he is preparing to blame Mousavi for any bloodshed. That is, the ayatollah has created a pretext for not only blaming the opposition for any escalation, but also created a storyline he can use to frame any crackdown on Mousavi himself.

Thus far, the violence has been mainly perpetrated by the IRGC's Basij militia. The Basij has beaten protesters, and reportedly killed some. But the Basij has focused largely on stealth techniques, including hunting down and arresting protesters at night, when there is less scrutiny of their actions. If the IRGC's professionals are deployed, then the violence could quickly escalate.

Second, the ayatollah and Ahmadinejad's comments may very well antagonize the protesters further. It was not wise to openly insult the hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets, yet that is exactly what the regime's leaders did. This was hardly a "rational" move by the regime's hardliners.

Third, the ball is now in Mousavi's court. Make no mistake about it, he has been warned. If Mousavi continues to lead the protests, then the ayatollah and his forces will hold him accountable. Will Mousavi back down? It does not appear he will, having rejected the ayatollah's offer to attend the Friday morning prayers. (That offer was undoubtedly intended to get Mousavi to give in.) But if Mousavi presses on, what is his gameplan for handling the violence that may be headed his way?

Fourth, now, today, is another opporunity for President Obama to speak. Mousavi has been threatened, as have the thousands of protesters. The ayatollah offered no conciliatory language for the protesters or the West. There was no talk of redoing the stolen election, or giving Mousavi a seat at the table. Obama has gone out of his way not to "meddle" in this affair, thinking that America's "meddling" may compromise efforts to negotiate with the Iranian regime going forward.

What has been the reward for America sidelining itself? More condemnations from the regime that Obama wants to negotiate with. That same regime may be on the verge of an even more violent convulsion.

Mousavi is far from a perfect partner. But it is clear that the Iranian people are rejecting the worst of the worst inside Iran's regime, not just supporting Mousavi. Mousavi and his supporters deserve to know that America will not sit by quietly as they stare down the ayatollah's threats - even if the only support they get right now is the president's rhetoric.

The thousands of protesters demanding democracy in Iran deserve to know that the world's most powerful democracy hears them, and stands by them.

Yesterday, Media Matters hosted a panel at the National Press Club where five liberal activists discussed the use of “extremist” language by the conservative media and its allegedly violent effects. “We all need to set a tone for civil national discourse,” declared Nancy M. Zirkin of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. It was a noble sentiment, though a bit ironic at an event where liberals tarred conservatives as bigots who inspire other bigots to commit acts of violence.

“FOX News is really mainstreaming this sort of vigilante almost malicious rhetoric,” Media Matters senior fellow Eric Boehlert said. He added that Lou Dobbs and pretty much everyone at FOX News were a “toxic group of people.”

“Hateful words have hateful consequences and blood will be on their hands if they don’t take actions to repudiate [them],” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro of the National Council of La Raza. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich agreed. “It amazes me that these people can go on TV and say whatever they want,” Beirich said. No word yet on whether Beirich has heard of the First Amendment.

Update: The SPLC's Heidi Beirich, and not Media Matters' Eric Boehlert, referred to "certain conservative commentators" as a "very toxic group of people". We regret the error.

In an interview with the Washington Post's Foreign Policy blog, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, described as Mir Hussein Mousavi's "external spokesman," had some sharp words for President Barack Obama's recent comments about the demonstrations in Tehran. But Makhmalbaf also said some things that could make it even more difficult for Obama to maintain his passive, pro-stability approach to the ongoing struggle for power in Iran.

FP: There has been growing criticism here in Washington that U.S. President Barack Obama hasn't said or done enough to support those demonstrating in the streets of Iran. Do you think Obama is being too careful? Or even that he is helping Ahmadinejad by being cautious?

MM: Obama has said that there is no difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Does he like it himself [when someone is] saying that there is no difference between Obama and [George W.] Bush? Ahmadinejad is the Bush of Iran. And Mousavi is the Obama of Iran.

One assumes that if Obama's full-throated support for the protesters would do great damage to their cause, as many Obama defenders have suggested, Mousavi's spokesman might have taken the opportunity to say so. He didn't.

And later, in what could also be understood as rebuke of Obama -- who has gone to great lengths to avoid saying anything casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad government and who, in his comments on CNBC earlier this week repeatedly referred to the thuggish regime as "the Iranian government" -- Makhmalbaf asked the international community not to recognize the government of Ahmadinejad as a legitimate government.

FP: Does Mousavi have a message that he'd like to deliver to the international community?

MM: [He asks] that the governments [of the world] pay attention to the people in the streets and do not recognize the government of Ahmadinejad as the representative of Iran -- [that they] do not recognize the government of Ahmadinejad as a legitimate government.

And later, in the same answer, Makhmalbaf offered a view that contradicts claims from some Obama supporters that the outcome of these elections is just an Iranian matter.

Earlier today, for example, John Kerry wrote: "We can’t escape the reality that for reformers in Tehran to have any hope for success, Iran’s election must be about Iran — not America. And if the street protests of the last days have taught us anything, it is that this is an Iranian moment, not an American one."

That, of course, is a straw man. No one has made such an argument. Many of those who want Obama to take a stronger public position against the fraudulent elections and in favor of the protesters want him to do so not to make this an American moment, but so that the American president might simply recognize the importance -- to Iran and to the world -- of this Iranian moment. (And some of us have even called it the Iranian Moment.)

In any case, the spokesman for Mousavi, the man at the center of those streets protests of these last days, says it it not just about Iran, but the world.

Iran is a very important country in the region, and the changes in Iran could have an influence everywhere. So as a result, it's not only an internal matter -- it's an international problem. If Iran could be a democratic Islamic country, that would be a pattern, a role model, for other Islamic countries. And even if Iran has a terrorist image [today], it would be a model for other countries [in the future].

Perhaps the most interesting comments from Makhmalbaf came when he was asked what he told Europeans on a recent trip to the European Parliament. "I asked the European Parliament to listen to the voice of the people of Iran who are in the streets. They don't want Ahmadinejad. They don't want nuclear bombs. They don't want atomic bombs. They want peace in the world and democracy in Iran."

This may or may not be true. (See here for some polling on the issue.) And Mousavi was prime minister when Iran's secret nuclear program began and he said during the campaign that he would not suspend uranium enrichment.

Still, he signaled a willingness to negotiate about Iran's nuclear program. Before the election there were many reasons to be pessimistic about the likely success of any nuclear negotiations with Iran (and good reasons to avoid engaging in them with Ahmadinejad).

But now, from an American perspective, there is now a big difference in what the two sides in Iran are saying about nuclear weapons. It may just be rhetoric. But, in my view, virtually any outcome is better than more President Ahmadinejad. And on the unlikely chance that it's not just rhetoric -- can President Obama afford to stay neutral?

Last week, Steve Hayes broke the story that the U.S. is mirandizing terrorist suspects captured in Afghanistan.

Today, the House passed a measure that "would prohibit any funds under the act being used to provide the rights Americans enjoy under Miranda v. Arizona by the Department of Justice, to terrorist detainees in the custody of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan."

Photos from today's protests in Iran.

Ed Morrissey: Obama has fired 2 IGs in 2 weeks, leashed another.

Jeffrey Goldberg: The Taboo That Won't Shut Up.

Barbara Boxer gets miffed at Brigadier General for addressing her as "ma'am."

Chris Matthews says Howard Dean was John the Baptist to Obama's messiah.

Allahpundit rounds up reports that indicate the clash between Mousavi and Khamanei could come to a head tomorrow. There's a lot of chatter that Khamanei will call in the Revolutionary Guard, and the Times (UK) reports:

The moderate Iranian leader who says that he was robbed of victory in last week’s presidential election faces a fateful choice today: support the regime or be cast out.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has told Mir Hossein Mousavi to stand beside him as he uses Friday prayers at Tehran University to call for national unity. An army of Basiji — Islamic volunteer militiamen — is also expected to be bussed in to support the Supreme Leader.

The demand was made at a meeting this week with representatives of all three candidates who claim that the poll was rigged, and it puts Mr Mousavi on the spot…

It was unclear last night what he would do or even whether the protests would die away if he backed down.

An hour ago, Mousavi reportedly broadcast his decision on Twitter: "Mousavi & Karoubi ask supporters NOT to attend Friday prayers (which is being delivered by supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei)."

I know that the protesters in Iran don't want the United States to interfere with their efforts in any way. I know this because John Kerry says it's true, and because every Democrat in government and the media is telling us that the people of Iran want the United States to keep quiet and not become, in President Obama's words, a "political football" in the standoff between the regime and the protesters. (Never mind reports of crowds gathered outside police stations pleading, “Obama, please help us, they are killing our young children.”) But there is one fact that doesn't jibe with the left's absolute certainty that this administration's silence is precisely what the protesters being beaten in the streets of Tehran want most from America -- the pictures. All the pictures show protesters holding signs in...English. To what end? Why would they want to galvanize support for their movement in the outside world if the only thing they want from the outside world is silence?

Reza Aslan discusses the Iranian election with Washington Times reporter Eli Lake and makes a rather startling assertion -- that Iran's electoral system provides "greater diversity of religious and political thought" than the American electoral system. The bizarre praise for Iranian democracy comes in the segment below, which includes Aslan offering an elaborate rebuttal to those who would criticize the Iranian regime for hand-picking the candidates that can run in the presidential election:

ASLAN: Yeah, but I need to clarify one thing because you hear this from westerners all the time about how yes but the candidates are vetted, yes but the candidates are vetted. Yeah, it’s true they are vetted, the Council of Guardians decide who is qualified to run for president and who isn’t qualified to run for president. And yes they do, as Donald Rumsfeld very famously said in 2005, they do disqualify 90 percent of people who run for president. That’s because 1,000 people ran for president in 2005.

LAKE: Oh please.

ASLAN: The Iranian constitution allows anyone to run, homeless people ran, people from insane asylums ran and, yes, of course, their decisions are politically motivated. They’re not going to allow someone to run that is challenging the very foundation of the Islamic Republic any more than we’d allow a communist to go into a debate with the Republican and the Democratic nominees here.

Aslan would go on to say that the 2005 Iranian election offered "greater diversity of religious and political thought than any two people, any Republican or Democrat that I can remember." And when Lake pointed out that there was no filtering mechanism in the American political system that prevented candidates the government deems unacceptable from running, Aslan retorted (as any lefty would) that "We have our own filtering device here. It’s called money."

This view is, presumably, not widely shared on the left, which may have had some illusions about Iranian democracy before Friday but seems now to be fairly clear-eyed about the true nature of that regime. But Aslan's unseemly support for the Iranian system does not come from some marginal figure. At the end of the discussion comes this exchange regarding rumors that Aslan might be headed to the NSC:

LAKE: Are you maybe going to the White House.

ASLAN: I can’t talk about that.

Anyone who believes that the Iranian electoral system, what with all the homeless people and insane people it weeds out, offers voters a greater range of choices than our democracy really ought to be automatically disqualified from a job at the White House.

Hard to believe there was a moment after the fall of the Soviet Union when Radio Free Europe’s existence came into question. Almost twenty years later, the broadcasts of RFE/RL (Radio Liberty) are in greater demand than ever in places like Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and, of course, Iran. RFE/RL has also been receiving steady reports from on the ground such as this one from the pseudonymous “Ely’s Diary.”

RFE/RL has been kind enough to host me next week in Prague so stay tuned for posts about just exactly what these folks are doing with our tax dollars. And yes, my investigative journalism will include honest comparisons between the Pilsner Urquell imports we get here and the Pilsner Urquell in the Czech Republic, the merits of Moravian wine, and maybe, just maybe, a serious analysis of Olomoucké tvaruzky--perhaps the stinkiest cheese on Planet Earth. But let’s not get too carried away.

The statement:

“The human tragedy continues in Iran. Around the world, people are inspired by the courage of the Iranian people fighting for free elections, using new media tools like Twitter to ensure their voices are heard by all of us. America has a moral responsibility to stand up for these brave people, to defend human rights, and to condemn the violence and abuses by the regime in Tehran.

“The Administration’s position that what’s going on in Iran is a ‘vigorous debate’ is absurd. People are being brutalized and murdered by the regime in Tehran. We have no idea exactly how many have died or have been seriously injured, since the regime has restricted journalists. In no way do these actions constitute a 'vigorous debate.'

“This brutal regime cannot be trusted to be reasonable with nuclear power. The United States cannot trust the aspirations of this regime, and the Administration must work with Congress to do everything in its power to deny Iran nuclear weapons."

The reference to "vigorous debate" comes from the administration's first statement on the events in Iran, put out the day after the "election," by Robert Gibbs. If it was a foolish thing to say then, it's just absurd now, but the State Department yesterday continued to use the euphemism, saying it was resolved not to interfere "in the debate that Iranians are having about their election and its aftermath."

For some reason the left, normally so process oriented (think Gitmo, where their main concern is not keeping terrorists detained but demonstrating America's commitment to the rule of law) has suddenly become so results oriented. Democrats are concerned not with doing what's right, but doing what they believe will best advance the cause of liberty in Iran -- in this case keeping their mouths shut. But don't Americans have some obligation -- a moral responsibility, as Cantor says -- to pick a side? Shouldn't America always be explicitly on the side of those who seek liberty and democracy, even at the cost of complicating our foreign relations or complicating their revolution? The Iranians accuse us of meddling anyway, which is what all authoritarian regimes do when they face internal dissent. And it is authoritarian states like China and Russia that seek to turn non-interference into some kind of international norm. Suddenly, they've found broad support for that view among the American left.

Time's Joe Klein thinks that Iran is "breezy with freedom." Freedom House, however, says Iran is "one of the most despotic regimes in the world." Peter Wehner observes in an excellent post Contentions that the problem with Klein's analysis, it seems, is that

He mistakes frequent flyer miles for wisdom, and overseas passports for insight. Joe is a man so consistently and, at times, comically wrong in his analysis, that he is becoming an advertisement for why, when it comes to commenting on foreign policy matters, it is better to stay at home than travel abroad. Why travel 7,000 miles to draw ideologically simplistic judgments? Klein is a political commentator who somewhere along the way convinced himself he was Henry Kissinger. It turns out he’s not even Warren Christopher.

Read the whole thing.

Lieberman and Graham got the Senate to vote on their photo amendment again, and again the Senate voted unanimously in support of the measure that would prevent the release of detainee photos that serve no purpose other than to put American troops in danger. CNN reports on the day's events, which put the ball back in Nancy's House, where a large, bipartisan majority of members supports the provision and will likely include it in the Defense Appropriations bill or as a stand alone measure. House liberals will squeal and try to get the measure stripped out in conference again, but the bottom line is that there is too much support for this legislation, in the Senate, the House, and the White House, for Lieberman and Graham not to get their way.

Full release from Lieberman after the jump...

The Republican Governors Association set up a website called The Corzine Times to campaign against New Jersey's Democratic governor Jon Corzine.

A lawyer for the New York Times, Deborah Beshaw, has sent a "cease and desist" letter to the RGA that takes issue with the RGA's use of the NYT's trademark "world-famous Gothic font, which registration is now incontestable."

The title for the site is designed to recall the world famous, protected New York Times logo, and the pages use the same fonts and layout as nytimes.com in order to mimic its design. Such copying is a clear infringement of The Times’s rights under the Copyright Act of 1976 and falsely suggests, in violation of the Lanham Act, that the Times has sponsored or is otherwise associated with your website.

I have left a message for Beshaw to see exactly what they want the RGA to do to make the Times happy. Is it okay to use the name "The Corzine Times" in different font, or would that too closely 'mimic' the NYT? The RGA will probably fight this on principle (and I suspect that a lawsuit from the Times probably won't hurt fundraising).

But if the RGA does decide to change the font of The Corzine Times, I can't recommend Aldine 721 highly enough.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) has some bizarre notions about “Uighur Nationalism” and the Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo. In a statement released Tuesday, Rohrabacher accused “some pundits in the Republican Party,” including Newt Gingrich, of being duped by Chinese intelligence. Since Mr. Gingrich has relied, in part, on my analyses of the Uighurs held at Gitmo (see here and here, for example), let me respond to Rohrabacher’s claims.

Rohrabacher implies that the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (“ETIM”) and its successor organization, the Turkistan Islamic Party (“TIP”), are “phony political organizations” created by Chinese intelligence to “tarnish good causes.” I say that Rohrabacher implies this because he can’t bring himself to come right out and claim it. It is a remarkable allegation. Rohrabacher is claiming that Chinese intelligence set up a fake al Qaeda affiliate in order to tarnish all Uighur opposition groups.

Of course, Rohrabacher provides no evidence in support of this proposition. It is just a wild allegation.

Keep in mind that the ETIM/TIP has been designated a terrorist organization allied with al Qaeda by both the UN and the U.S. The Obama administration also designated the ETIM/TIP’s leader, Abdul Haq, an al Qaeda terrorist earlier this year. So, it is not just some Republicans who have been duped, according to Rohrabacher’s “logic.”

Rohrabacher further claims the Bush administration held Uighurs at Gitmo “and labeled them as terrorists to appease the Chinese government in a pathetic attempt to gain its support at the beginning of the war against Iraq and to assure China’s continued purchases of U.S. treasuries.”

Rohrabacher does not offer a shred of evidence to back up his claim. This is a serious charge. Rohrabacher is claiming that the Bush administration knowingly locked up innocents in an attempt to garner support from the Chinese government. Why, then, did the Bush administration repeatedly refuse to turn over the Uighurs detained at Gitmo to the Chinese government? The Chinese have complained over and over again that the Bush administration did not repatriate the Uighurs to China. Beijing even accused the Bush administration of violating international law.

If anything, the Bush administration’s handling of the Uighurs’ detention at Gitmo further enraged Beijing, not appeased it.

Remember when the Iranians left blueprints for a nuclear warhead lying around, and then told the IAEA inspectors that the regime "received them inadvertently while purchasing its nuclear equipment on the black market decades ago"? Well, accidents will happen:

Iran's envoy to the UN atomic watchdog caused a buzz among journalists on Wednesday when he apparently misspoke and said his country had the right to a nuclear weapon.

After saying as usual that Iran was only pursuing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, Ali Asghar Soltanieh strayed alarmingly from the Islamic republic's usual line.

"The whole Iranian nation are united... on (the) inalienable right of (having a) nuclear weapon," the envoy to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said.

But don't worry, everything you think you know about Iran is wrong according to Fareed Zakaria, who assures us the Iranians understand that "following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits," and the country's "Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral," and later said that producing nuclear weapons is "forbidden under Islam." So relax, just because they have highly-enriched uranium, blueprints for a nuclear warhead, and an envoy declaring to international inspectors that the regime has an "inalienable right" to build a nuclear weapon, that doesn't mean anything.

The Washington Post reports that President Obama's envoy to Sudan has declared an end to the genocide:

President Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, said Wednesday that the Sudanese government is no longer engaging in a "coordinated" campaign of mass murder in Darfur, marking a shift in the U.S. characterization of the violence there as an "ongoing genocide."

"What we see is the remnants of genocide," Gration told reporters at a briefing in Washington. "The level of violence that we're seeing right now is primarily between rebel groups, the Sudanese government and . . . some violence between Chad and Sudan."

Gration's remarks come as the Obama administration is finishing a review of its Sudan policy. The comments appeared to expose an emerging rift between Gration and Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who accused the Sudanese leadership of genocide as recently as two days ago.

Gration was always an odd choice for this job. He was a close Obama adviser but managed to avoid any real media scrutiny during the campaign. He said some crackpot things before the election, but no one much cared, and he grew up in Africa, which may explain how he was able to suddenly, after more than five years, end the genocide in Sudan. Or is it maybe possible that Susan Rice hasn't changed her view in the last two days and still believes that genocide is taking place? And what of Samantha Power? Is she comfortable crossing genocide in Sudan off the list of problems this administration is worried about?

It was only a little over a year ago that Clinton, McCain, and Obama joined together to issue a joint statement on Sudan declaring that they stood "united and demand that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end." Will McCain and Clinton congratulate Obama on achieving that goal in less than 150 days and without so much as a statement or a Security Council resolution? Or, as Jim Geraghty says, do all Obama's promises come with an expiration date?

The Times's Joe Nocera reviews the Obama administration's financial regulatory overhaul: "[I]t’s not even close to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression."

Meanwhile, Peter Hart and Bill McInturff's polling shows that the president's approval rating is below 60 percent.

And health-care reform is running up against hurdles in the Senate.

And flies are attacking the White House.

The presidential honeymoon? It's over.

Matthias Kuntzel provided the necessary background in 2006.

Radio Farda sends along another letter it received from a journalist Teheran last night. It is written under the pseudonym E. Ahmadi:

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

I woke up with a splitting headache this morning as the sounds of honking cars, loud explosions and screams and chants of last night were still echoing in my head. After sipping a dark coffee I headed towards the newspaper that I work. To my surprise the editor asked all ladies to leave the premises and not to come back to work until the situation becomes calmer. The secret police and “Ministry of information Militia” have warned all journalists and anybody who works in newspapers that their lives are in their own hands. So the editors and the managers did not wanted to take any risks and respectfully asked all female employees to leave. It seems that the tramodern (modernizing traditional) society of Iran still considers all women as “zaeefeh” (less powered).

I met a friend of mine for lunch in a hip coffee shop at 1 pm and our conversation as well as every other conversation at all tables was about the elections, cheating, riots, and killings. My friend Maryam was not feeling well; she had been in “Atieh Hospital” in Shahraq Qarb (North-West of Tehran) that morning and had witnessed two people being treated in the emergency rooms: a person shot in the head and another one attacked by an Axe who had lost his kidney. As Maryam was speaking a man sitting next to us brought out a picture of a person who was shot during Monday’s demonstration near Azadi square. Conversation flared up as every person lost their appetite and the anger grew over the killings and the utter violence of the ruling elite in attempt to control the situation and scare off people. Rumors about foreign mercenaries grew, about Russians, Venezuelans, Lebanese, Sudanese, and Palestinians who might be the ones who are doing the actual beating and shootings. But then one person said “hey, these are our own people, with a twisted fundamentalist mentality. The guns maybe Russian made but we have to accept that our own people are killing us. We have to find a way to bring them back to us…..” His words ringed in my ears.

I knew that communications would be lost in the afternoon (an interesting technology provided by a particular Scandinavian IT company that results in total disruption in mobile phones) therefore I called my friends and coordinated our actions for the afternoon demonstration in “Hafte Tir Square” and started to move to the area around 3 pm. On my way towards Hafte Tir Square in “Hemmat highway” (going west to east) I saw a column of black painted automobiles (VW vans and Toyota trucks) carrying anti-riot guards towards Hafte Tir square. They were from Sarallah Garrison, 13th division. At first I wanted to roll down the window and start swearing at them from the bottom of my lungs but then my ears started to ring again so I rolled down the window and screamed “Khaste nabashin” (a phrase in Persian that wishes relief of hard work for the other party) while showing a victory sign with my fingers. It worked. A couple of them smiled back at me and one of them secretly showed a V sign while holding his hands hidden from others. The ice broke. “Don’t hit us” I cried while Maryam sped off.

5 pm, Hafte Tir square, as usual fearful of persecution we met with our friends in a small quiet street in Bokharest Avenue (north of Hafte tir square) and decided to walk in groups of two, just like we did on Monday’s mass rally, to reach Hafte tir square. As we walked down Bokharest Avenue and then Ghaem Magham Farahani Avenue (the continuation of Bokharest Avenue south of Motahari blvd.) our numbers grew. It was like small streams of water making a thunderous and roaring river. By the time we reached Hafte Tir Green colors of Mr. Mousavi supporters and in smaller groups “white and red banners” of Mr. Karoubi supporters dominated the whole square. I lost all fear. Safety in numbers! There was no sign of the black colored vehicles or any of the guards. The demonstrators started to educate the world, it was the most peaceful, cultured, civilized and silent demonstration that I had ever seen or heard. Over half a million people did not chant a single word for over three hours. After 8 pm again the “uncomfortable annoying but effective honking of the horns of the cars” campaign restarted. As I headed home I did not see any burning garbage carts, tires, or motorbikes. But I wondered if we have the right unity to see a change and if this cultured attitude would continue or lead to another fascism. Right before I went to sleep I heard some explosions from faraway.

E. Ahmadi

Tehran

From Daniel Henniger:

Medicaid alone didn't put California and New York on the brink. Add in spending on public education and you've accounted for about 60% of their budgets. This drives the deficits and gets all the ink, but not least among the casualties of bigness is the idea of governance.

The elected legislatures of California, which holds 36.7 million American citizens, and New York, with 20 million, are essentially falling apart as governing bodies. The whole country has witnessed the spectacle of the comic "coup" in New York's Senate in Albany the past two weeks.

With collapse comes a truth: The bigger the government, the smaller the politicians. As mandated entitlements grow, the spending "crowds out" the need or obligation to think or to govern. Legislators with nothing very real to do become lazy, slack and corrupt. They become Albany. Or Sacramento. Or Trenton.

Or Washington.

In yet another blow to the Democrats' grand unified vision of gigantic, transformative health care reform passed in a matter of weeks, with a government-run option, Tom Daschle publicized a plan yesterday—without a government-run option.

He's joining with fellow former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker and Bob Dole to put forth a bipartisan compromise:

"While I feel very strongly that consumers should have the choice of a national, Medicare-like plan, my colleagues do not. . . But we were concerned that the ongoing health reform debate is beginning to show signs of fracture on the public plan issue, so in order to advance the process of developing bipartisan legislation and to move it forward, it's time to find consensus here," Daschle said.

"We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreements on one single issue," he said.

In a blow to President Obama and many of his Democratic allies in the health care fight, the plan recommends that there be no federal public option, but rather state or regional public-sponsored networks that would compete with private health plans, according to the summary released today by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The proposed plan would cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years, even without the "public" option, which gives you an idea of the territory we'd be creeping into with a government-run plan. The proposal, which can be read here, is very detailed and proposes to pay for all $1 trillion of the cost by realizing savings, instituting "play-or-pay" taxes on businesses that don't offer health insurance, and cutting Medicare and Medicare Advantage spending. How they're going to cover the other $200 billion is more hazy, but they offer ideas.

This plan suggests a health care mandate for individuals (something Dole had to compromise on), state insurance "exchanges," and comparative effectiveness studies, among other reforms.

From the Washington Times, W on Gitmo:

"I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor," he said. "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."

He's right. And it is good to see him make the point. But, there is a bit of irony here. The Bush administration placed too much faith in the Saudis' rehabilitation program, which relies on familial shame, bribes, and art classes to convince detainees to give up jihad. That is, the program is based on "therapy," family ties, and money.

More than 100 Saudis were repatriated from Gitmo to Saudi Arabia under the Bush administration. We don't know for certain how many of them returned to jihad. The Saudis themselves have said that 11 of the Kingdom's 85 Most Wanted were once Gitmo detainees. (One of the 11 has since turned himself in.) This is an embarrassing admission, given that the Saudis have repeatedly said they should be trusted to keep tabs on Saudi nationals detained by the U.S. There could easily be more who have either already returned to jihad or that will.

Consider one striking example of the types of detainees repatriated to Saudi Arabia during the Bush years. Jumah al Dossari clearly helped recruit the "Lackawanna Six" al Qaeda cell outside of Buffalo. Members of the six have been convicted and sentenced to time in jail, an accomplishment rightly trumpeted by the Bush administration. The FBI, according to press reports, wanted to prosecute al Dossari for his role in recruiting the six. That is how strong the evidence against al Dossari is. Al Dossari is clearly a longtime recruiter for Osama bin Laden and has compiled an extensive dossier of violent jihadist activities.

Al Dossari was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007.

Amazingly, the Obama administration recently sent a likely murderer and convicted terrorist back to Saudi Arabia to attend the same program.

The Washington Times's account linked to above notes that President Bush wanted to close Gitmo, just as President Obama does. Of course, President Bush tried to close Gitmo by transferring large numbers of detainees to foreign nations. This was the Bush administration's attempt to answer calls for closing the facility, many of which came from foreign nations.

But the Bush administration ran into problems, including how to handle roughly 100 Yemeni detainees detained at Gitmo. Yemen is one of the least trustworthy nations in terms of detaining terrorist suspects. While the Bush administration was willing to give the Saudis a chance to hold more than 100 detainees, it was not willing to trust Yemen with the same opportunity.

What is the Obama administration's answer to this conundrum?

Well, the Obama administration wants to send the Yemenis to Saudi Arabia, where they can attend the Saudi rehabilitation program. This is the same program that, as just explained, is not nearly as effective as the Saudis have claimed. What's worse: Most of the Yemenis held at Gitmo have no familial roots in Saudi Arabia. But a large part of the Saudi program is based on familial shame. So, there are good reasons to think the Saudi program will be even less effective in rehabilitating the Yemenis.

John Kerry, who lost the 2004 presidential election and despite having been and early and outspoken supporter of Barack Obama was passed over for any of the plum jobs in the new Democratic administration, has taken to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to write about Iran.

Not surprisingly, he approves of President Obama's decision to position the United States a passive observer of the ongoing tumult in Iran. Kerry laments the "clamor from neoconservatives urging President Obama to denounce the voting as a sham and insert ourselves directly in Iran’s unrest." Kerry chides John McCain, whom he sought as a runningmate in 2004, for urging the president to place himself squarely on the side of the protesters. Those who offer such advice, Kerry suggests with something of a verbal pat on the head, are merely responding "emotionally." As if to underscore the condescension, Kerry's piece runs under the headline: "With Iran, Think Before You Speak."

Was Kerry thinking on Monday? At a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Kerry, perhaps responding emotionally, did precisely what the dreaded neoconservatives have been clamoring for from President Obama: He directly questioned the results of the sham election.

"I share the concern of many in Iran and around the world that the results of Iran's presidential election appear not to reflect the will of the Iranian people," he said in his prepared remarks.

And later, in a question-and-answer session with former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, Kerry went further, calling the results "hard to defend," pointing out with skepticism that the regime claims to have carried "Mousavi's hometown," and flatly saying of Ahmadinejad's winning margin, "I don't buy it."

MR. BROKAW: Let me pick up, if I can, on your opening remarks about Iran and see if we can work our way through that, if you will, at the outset. Do we have any evidence within what passes for our intelligence community of massive fraud in the election or is it still a case of we just don't know what's going on there?

SEN. KERRY: The evidence that we have, obviously, are the homeland data that people had, the firsthand anecdotal accounts of people who were there observing, the intensity of the last weeks of the campaign, and I think the reaction of the people themselves. I think it's not insignificant that the Supreme Ayatollah has now backed off of his initial quote, you know, "clean slate ratification" and has now said there will be some kind of investigation, and I find that very, very significant. I think we're just going to have to let this play out.

MR. BROKAW: Cautionary tale from me, having been there and having watched the last election, is that when we get reporters into Iran, they're mostly confined to Tehran, to the urban areas, and you talk about a blue state/red state differentiation. The rural areas of Iran which elected Ahmadinejad last time, we can't get to. We don't know what goes on out there and there is a massive population out there as well.

Is it possible that most of what we're seeing, which is coming from the streets of Tehran and the more cosmopolitan population, the university students, the more progressive, Western-looking Persians, are getting most of the attention and in the rural areas they're going and voting for the regime that—

SEN. KERRY: Well, it's my understanding, Tom, that about 30 percent of Iran's population is quote "rural" that would be more affected. Seventy percent is effectively urban in one form or another, so I don't buy that notion. I also don't buy it in the sense that allegedly --

MR. BROKAW: Sixty-five percent -- (inaudible) --

SEN. KERRY: Well, not only the margin, but allegedly they carried Mousavi's key areas including his home town. A little hard to defend, so I think there's real cause for concern here that, you know, what we're able to do about it is limited.

If Kerry would have offered some words of support -- not just admiration -- for the protesters he would have sounded a lot like the "neoconservatives" calling for the president to "denounced the voting as a sham."

It's almost as if he was for denouncing the Iranian election before he was against it.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

A House committee threw a wrench in the Obama administration's plans to end Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-22 Raptor fighter program, voting instead to add $369 million in extra funding to keep production of the Air Force's most advanced jet alive.

Mr. Gates thinks the Air Force only needs 187 of the F-22 fighters. The White House didn't budget for additional planes beyond that level in its proposed 2010 Defense Department budget, which is currently being reviewed by Congress.

But in a showdown early on Wednesday morning, the Committee voted 31 to 30 on the extra funding amendment, which is part of its 2010 Defense Department spending bill mark up. The measure will now have to wind its way through the House and the Senate.

One of the proponents was Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop, who believes that 187 jets is "frighteningly low," according to a spokesman. Some lawmakers wanted to commit to buying 12 more F-22 jets, but others in the group thought that option would be too expensive. The new funding is, in effect, a down payment on 12 additional jets to be bought in the fiscal year 2011.

This is good news and it shows that resistance to the Obama administration's massive defense cuts is more substantial than what might have been apparent at first glance. The real test will come in the Senate Appropriations Committee, but this is a major victory for supporters of the F-22 program, which as recently as yesterday seemed all but dead. Whether the service actually buys 12 planes is almost irrelevant at this point, as the real struggle is just to keep the production line going so that it is possible, if necessary, to buy additional air frames for the Air Force or to design an export model for the Japanese and other close allies.

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel (that’s the extreme anti-Israel branch), who has served time in jail for providing financial support to Hamas, who in a 2007 sermon “urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to ‘save al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation,’” and who is a citizen of Israel, today told Arab students--and Arab students only--that “Jerusalem was an ‘Arab, Muslim and Palestinian issue alone,’” and that “Israel constantly dug tunnels under the Temple Mount and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was planning to rebuild the Temple.” Adds the Jerusalem Post:

Salah's speech also attacked Jews, saying, “They want to build their temple at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one ‘general terrorist’ to another ‘general terrorist.’” He also said, “We are not those who ate bread dipped in children’s blood.”

The pusillanimity of the university’s administrators in permitting the ancient blood libel against Jews to be heard within their walls (“We didn't invite him, but in the end, for legal reasons, we had to let him in”) is pretty horrifying, but that’s the downside of life in a liberal democracy: a person devoted to its destruction, even if only ideologically, is free to speak his mind. But permitting the boycotting of Jewish students at an institution of higher learning in the Jewish state, at the behest, presumably, of the anti-Semitic speaker and his audience, and especially at a moment when American and European academics are engaged in a vicious boycott campaign against Israel itself--that's not freedom of speech, that's just indefensible and unforgivable groveling.

CNN reports:

Republican Rep. Mike Pence, criticizing President Obama for not saying more in support of protestors in Iran, said Wednesday that he is taking another step to show solidarity for the dissenting citizens of the country.

"I appreciate the fact that the president said the protesters have a right to be heard and represented, and I appreciate the fact that he said he is troubled," Pence said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room. "But I respectfully disagree with the administration's decision to essentially draw the line at not meddling and not interfering."

Read the whole thing...

Daytime MSNBC anchor David Shuster apologizes to Joementum:

“Tamaran , an update now on a story we did earlier this week. On Monday we did a Hypocrisy Watch segment on Senator Joe Lieberman, his office points out that on some of the issues we mentioned Monday, there are no longer major differences between the Senator’s current position and that of President Obama. We pointed out the statements the Senator made as recently as last summer, but his office notes that his stance for instance on dialogue with Iran is now similar to that of President Obama. There’s no question Senator Lieberman’s positions have evolved since last year when he campaigned for John McCain, however to suggest that Senator Lieberman is a hypocrite was harsh. A fair approach would have been to simply point out the evolution of his policies, and not attempt to characterize the Senator’s motives; the Senator can speak for himself. In any case, we appreciate Senator Lieberman’s office reaching out, and we renew the invitation we made on Monday: Senator Lieberman, you are always welcome to come on this show, and discuss your views on the issues of the day.”

See the background here.

A friend emails:

Obama's tireless defenders have spent the past two days explaining that Obama's relative silence in the face of the Iranian crisis was actually aimed at helping the Iranian opposition. Anything he said, they claimed, would be cited by the Iranian government as unacceptable American intervention and thus hurt the opposition. Obama was right to avoid making the United States the issue in Iran, they claimed. And anyone who called for more forceful statements by Obama was irresponsible.

So what do they say now that the Iranian regime has gone ahead and condemned Obama's tepid statements as unacceptable intervention anyway? Will they now chastise Obama for making the United States the issue in Iran, after all? Presumably they will come up with a new story because, after all, for Obama's defenders, this isn't about Iran. It's about refighting Bush-era battles and defending the president.

Via Ace, Reuters reports:

The State Department strongly rejected claims that the U.S. was interfering in the disputed June 12 election, pointing out that diplomats from other countries had also been summoned.

"I suspect we are in good company. As the president has said, we are not interfering in the debate that Iranians are having about their election and its aftermath," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "This is not about the United States."

For those on the left who think that this administration's response to the Iranian crackdown has been pitch perfect, perhaps the description of events inside Iran as a "debate" is a bridge too far?

Obama, on Monday, to the AMA:

I’ll be honest. There are countries where a single-payer system may be working.

He forgot to brief Robert Gibbs on which ones. When asked at the press conference today which countries Obama was referring to, Gibbs stumbled:

"I don't know exactly the countries. I think you can if you talk to people in the countries that have those systems, they'd think their health care is pretty good."

After being pushed to give specific countries, Gibbs repeated the reporters suggestions of Canada and Britain, adding "maybe France."

He then went on to undercut the president's entire rationale for major health care overhaul:

"I don't know the exact countries. But i don't think the President is going way out on a limb to say that people in other countries have health care system that they like, just as Americans like the health care system that they have."

Obama, May 28: "I think the status quo is unacceptable."

Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, this week: "Everybody recognizes the status quo is the enemy. It's unacceptable, unsustainable."

Nancy-Ann Deparle, head of the Office of Health Care Reform, March: "There were no defenders of the status quo."

There are no defenders of the status quo. Everyone agrees we have a very serious, unsustainable problem. Except for the spokesman for the president, who says "Americans like the health care system they have."

That's a dangerous comment to make the same week Americans, many of whom may indeed like their health care system despite its faults, are hit with the "eye-popping" pricetag for an Obama-approved overhaul that may or may not actually fix the problems. It's almost as if Gibbs has been taking advice on how best to sabotage the president's message from Joe Biden himself.

As a fan of both liberty and sports, it's nice to see when the popular power of the former can help the cause of the latter. In Seoul, South Korea, the Iranian soccer team showed more than its traditional colors, adding make-shift green armbands to their uniforms, in a show of support for Iranian citizens who are protesting the results of Iran's rigged election. Green was the campaign color employed by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi:

Five Iranian players in today's World Cup qualifier against South Korea took to the pitch with green armbands in apparent support of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader who has alleged massive fraud in last week's presidential election.

The protesters included team captain Mehdi Mahdavikia and Mohammed Ali Karimi, the former Bayern Munich midfielder, although all five had taken the armbands off by the time they came back out for the second half.

I wonder who intervened during halftime.

But protests weren't relegated to the field:

Dozens of Iran fans had staged a protest ahead of the match in Seoul to condemn the alleged vote-rigging which saw the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected by a landslide. During the match itself they unfurled a banner which read "Go to Hell Dictator!" and held up green paper signs asking "Where is my vote?"

The Iranian team needed a win to automatically qualify for the 2010 Word Cup, but ended up with a tie. The Telegraph has a slide show of the protesting players, here.

Reuters has a great video report on the fan protests, which includes this quote: "I wish I was there right now, so I could go to the streets, like the other youths, and shout for freedom."

Obama said yesterday to CNBC:

The difference between Ahmedinejad and Moussavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has cause some problems in the neighborhood, and is pursuing nuclear weapons.

I think that's probably true -- or at least it was last week. At this point, the uprising sparked by last week's stolen election may well have fundamentally changed how Mousavi views himself and his movement (and I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone leading anti-regime protests in the streets of Tehran). In that sense, to offer this statement now only serves to undermine bipartisan enthusiasm for the events unfolding in Iran. But there is one obvious reason why Obama couldn't say this last week. Obama's Cairo speech was generally credited, at least in part, for the election result in Lebanon. A second favorable result in Iran would have given the press free rein to declare the "Obama Effect" an undeniable reality (usually it takes three incidents to establish a pattern, but the rules are different for Obama). Suggesting an equivalence between A'jad and Mousavi last week would have prevented Obama from taking credit for a Mousavi victory if things had worked out differently.

In a slapdown not all that unlike the one furnished by the Iranian regime in reply to his March Nowruz message, our appeasing fly-vanquisher of a president has received an answer to his placatory toe-dipping on the stolen election. The foreign ministry, in “protest and displeasure,” has hauled in the Swiss ambassador, who represents our interests--such as they are--in Tehran, to deliver to him a vicarious dressing-down of U.S. government officials for their statements about the election.

The president of the United States ought to have heaped abuse upon the Iranian thugocracy for the same money. Instead, the mullahs--and, more to the point, we--are treated to this lame bleating issuing from his throat: “It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling—the US president, meddling in Iranian elections . . .” “. . . violence directed at peaceful protesters. . . . That is not how governments should interact with their people.”

Indeed, oppression is never how governments should “interact” with their people. But neither is appeasement how our government should interact with its enemies. Ever.

Politico's Manu Raju reports that the GOP is "struggling to find its pitch on Iran." Maybe - Max Boot suggests Ben Smith may have overstated any rift - but so is the left. Andrew Sullivan is demanding "no recognition of Ahmadinejad" as "the first and absolute requirement of all Western governments." Sullivan's writing has showed a clear drift over the last week away from the realists, who would recognize A'jad or any other thug that seizes power in Iran, and sparked a quick response from Stephen Walt, who asks, "How far is Sullivan willing to take this?"

Moments later, Sullivan made clear that he wouldn't take it so far as to drop his Jew-baiting: "[neocons] are about warfare against Israel's perceived enemies...that is the prism through which you have to watch their every statement." That should satisfy Walt for the time being, but this kind of squabbling is clear evidence that the left, too, is struggling to find the right response to the protests in Iran.

I'd offer an alternate theory: Republicans are struggling to find ways to provide meaningful support to the opposition and to inflict real damage on the regime -- to seize this very rare moment of instability in Iran -- but aren't sure how best to proceed (which is why Christian Whiton and Dan Senor offer them some ideas in the Journal today). In contrast, Democrats seem torn between their desire to support the president's stability-focused approach on the one hand, and their desire to support the opposition on the other. It's the Democrats who face a real fight over policy, though it's tamped down by near-universal deference for the president, while Republican are really doing the only thing they can, which is to urge the president to show a little more back-bone.

The AP reports:

State TV: Iran accuses US of "intolerable" meddling in its internal affairs.

Quoth Bill Kristol: "If only."

Careful with the clone tool, Mahmoud. Like your Members Only jacket, it works only in small doses.

Thugs, meet the Internet:

Iran clamped down Tuesday on independent media in an attempt to control images of election protests, but pictures and videos leaked out anyway — showing how difficult it is to shut off the flow of information in the Internet age.

The restrictions imposed by the government made such social-networking sites as Twitter and Flickr more prominent — with even the U.S. State Department calling on Twitter to put off a scheduled shutdown for maintenance.

Iranians were posting items online, but it wasn't known how much of that information was being seen by others inside the country. And although some of the posts on Twitter appeared to be from users in Tehran, others clearly were not.

Following a massive opposition rally Monday, authorities restricted journalists — including Iranians working for foreign media — from reporting on the streets. They could effectively only work from their offices, conducting telephone interviews and monitoring official sources such as state TV.

Ensign was head of the Republican Policy Committee, the fourth-ranking Republican position in the Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released this statement:

"He's accepted responsibility for his actions and apologized to his family and constituents. He offered, and I accepted, his resignation as chairman of the Policy Committee," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement just issued.

Update: Will Thune get the gig? He's currently serving as Republican Conference vice-chair, the fifth-ranking position in the Senate.

Matthew Cooper, now over at the Atlantic after a brief stint at Talking Points Memo, uses Marc Ambinder's blog to attack my colleague Steve Hayes for "buffoonery," for not being "genial," and for impugning the president's motives vis-à-vis Iran:

It's not enough, though, for Neocons to disagree with the Obama policy--they have to impugn his motives too. Thus Hayes writes of Obama, "Does he actually prefer Ahmadinejad?" and "His policy is regime preservation. And it's a disgrace." There's nothing in the administration record to suggest that they want to uphold the Ahmadinejad regime.

I don't know how you respond to a guy who used to work at TPM complaining that certain writers aren't genial enough, but with regard to Cooper's claim that there is nothing in this administration's record which suggests they "want to uphold the Ahmadinejad regime," I have seen some contradicting evidence.

I direct Cooper to the twitter feed of one Marc Ambinder, who reported on Saturday night that "White House officials say they worry about the stability of Iran during a protracted post-vote period of uncertainty." At the time, I thought this can't possibly be true -- worrying about the stability of Iran on Saturday meant they were worried about how to "uphold the Ahmadinejad regime." So I asked Ambinder, "Aren't we for regime change/collapse in Iran?" His response: "The last guy was. This guy ain't."

Cooper concedes throughout his post that he "wouldn't claim to know how best to influence the situation in Iran," and "won't claim to understand Iranian politics well," so I would suggest in as genial a manner as I know how that he ought to read his colleague Marc Ambinder's very well regarded reporting before he starts writing TPM-style partisan hits on Ambinder's blog.

A friend emails:

Obama has really hit a new low when the French are issuing better public statements than his administration:

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said: "We do not want to intervene directly and we are not doing that. But indignation, the need to support democrats, the need to support reformists -- that, we affirm loud and clear."

Radio Free Europe's Radio Farda sends along an interesting eyewitness account from Tehran:

Today, under slate skies and despite official warnings that the permit to march had been denied, against rumors that orders had been given to shoot to kill, they came. They came by the tens if not hundreds of thousands, marching east to west along the many kilometers of Enqelab Street to Azadi, or Freedom Square. "It would be dishonorable, na mardi, to not go," a young couple explained. "We have to go." Another man asks who is going, what is going on? He is told that the "Mousavi-chiha" are marching starting at 4. He laughs, "Mousavi-chiha nadarim, hame ye Iran hastand!" We don't have Mousavi supporters, it's now all of Iran...

That they came to Azadi, a place where thirty years ago the Revolution pivoted towards victory was fitting, for as much as the election campaign had been about who best represented the revolutionary values of Iran, Islam, and the late Imam, the push and pull of the past few days between opposition and Ahmadinejad forces has been a struggle to lay claim to authenticity. Authenticity that lies in the imagined and lived past, places, and practices of the Islamic Republic. It is as if whomever can get to the important places and rituals first and stay there, hang onto them, will win. So at night, beginning at 9 pm, we hear shouts of "Allah Akbar!" from the rooftops, just like in the fall and winter of 1978-1979. We have marches to sacred spots like Azadi and appeals by all sides to the memory of Khomeini...

In the crowd there are families, young and old. One cannot help but notice the large presence of women of all ages. The typical daily life of the capital is out here together, the homes, sidewalks and boulevards abandoned for this shared space. There is word that the crowd is millions strong; we know that it stretches eastwards to Imam Hussein Square. It is an incredible occasion---by comparison the state-organized 200,000 strong anniversary march that takes place every February starts from around Ferdowsi Square, several kilometers closer in to Azadi.

The mood in the crowd was positive, reminiscent of the joyous celebrations of the final week of the campaign. The chants are up-to-date, changed to reflect the new circumstances in Iran, the things that we did not know before Friday's vote. "Hale ye noor e ro dide, rai e mano nadide?" A reference to the light of the hidden Imam that Ahmadinejad claimed to have seen, roughly translated to rhyme, "If he saw that light, why didn't he see the vote we cast with all our might?!" And, "Ta in Ahmadi nejad hast, in ghaziye ijad hast!" Until this Ahmadi is here, this commotion will not disappear!

Upper East Side Rep. Carolyn Maloney met with the editorial board of the New York Daily News as she prepares to mount a primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand. When Gillibrand was first appointed, she told reporters she kept not one but two guns under her bed for self-defense (she says she's since moved the guns for fear they'd be stolen). Maloney told the Daily News, "I am for gun control. I don't have guns under my bed -- guns kill."

Maloney also noted Gillibrand's "evolving" position on guns, immigration, and economic policy as evidence of bad character, and in fairness, Gillibrand doesn't seem to love the Second Amendment quite so much as she loves being the junior Senator from New York. Still, there aren't many Democrats left in the Senate who are as hostile to gun owners as Maloney, a fact that may have something to do with there being so many Democrats in the Senate. If Maloney does take down Gillibrand, she might become the poster girl for liberal gun control policies -- which might not be such a bad thing for Republicans.

HT: Ben Smith

Baucus bill: $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

A socialist speaks for socialized health care. Cute.

Sen. Claire McCaskill: Obama did not follow the law he co-sponsored on IG firing.

"I am now the target of the most powerful man in this country, with an army of aides whose major responsibility today seems to be to attack me and get rid of me."

The Man put that money in my freezer.

Health care pricetags leave Dems reeling.

Another day, another march in Tehran.

Ensign leadership position in question.

An economist takes on Obama's white paper on financial regulation, with enjoyable results.

The House passed the supplemental yesterday by a vote of 226-202, with 32 Democrats voting against. Last month 51 Democrats voted against the spending, but since then the conference has added funding for the IMF and stripped out a Senate amendment that would have prevented the release of photos that allegedly show detainee abuse. We can apparently credit this achivement to the "responsible left." I'd heard rumors it existed, but I always thought it was a myth like Big Foot or the Lochness monster:

The dynamics were striking in the Massachusetts delegation, where House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank — a nay vote in May — took a strong stand in favor of the IMF money and two other Democrats also shifted to support the president on this round.

“Off the record, it’s what we call the responsible left,” said one Massachusetts lawmaker. Frank himself was scathing toward both sides, who had often mimicked one another’s arguments that the IMF money constituted a European bank bailout.

“The left and the right live in parallel universes,” Frank told POLITICO. “The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. ... I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.”

Keep in mind, the vote last time was 368-60 -- with only nine Republicans voting against. Since then, the Democrats jammed in IMF funding that probably couldn't pass otherwise, and House liberals still threatened to vote against the bill en masse unless the Graham-Lieberman amendment on detainee photos was stripped out. This responsible left, including Frank, would have voted against funding for the troops and for the IMF if the bill had included the Graham-Lieberman language that was passed unanimously in the Senate with support from the White House, the Secretary of State, and the commanders on the ground. So how bad do you have to be for these guys to call you irresponsible?

In an interview with CNBC yesterday, President Obama once again went out of his way to downplay the protests on the streets of Iran.

"Well, I think first of all, it's important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, that the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised."

If Obama had made this statement before the election, it would have been accurate. And perhaps it's still true. But there is always the possibility that Mousavi becomes the leader the protesters rallying on the streets -- many of them in his name -- want him to be. (And it's worth pointing out that Joe Klein, who has praised Obama's handling of the current crisis, acknowledges the difference between the two on nuclear weapons, though he says, accurately, that the mullahs are the ones that matter.)

But the bigger question is why, with millions of Iranians protesting Ahmadinejad's repressive rule, Obama would say anything that would be seen as diminishing those efforts? Does he actually prefer Ahmadinejad?

Many Iranians are on the streets for two reasons: 1) they believe the election was fraudulent, or, 2) they support Mousavi.

Obama has said that he admires the protesters, but never that he supports them. And he has carefully avoided directly casting doubt on the election results (only acknowledging that others believe this). He has pretended that the "investigation" into the outcome will be a serious undertaking. And now he needlessly undercuts Mousavi?

His policy is regime preservation. And it's a disgrace.

UPDATE: See Jennifer Rubin, smart as usual, here.

Dan Senor and Christian Whiton: "Five Ways Obama Could Promote Freedom in Iran"

Robert Kagan: "Obama, Siding With the Regime"

Danielle Pletka and Ali Alfoneh: "Iran’s Hidden Revolution"