Ayatollahs Protest Election Fraud  —  [TEHRAN BUREAU] Mir Hossein Mousavi's, the main reformist rival to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, letter to the important ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom, asking them to protest the fraud and declare it against Islam, has sparked protests by the ayatollahs and clerics as well.

Insurrection: Day 2  —  The great Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski witnessed and wrote about dozens of revolutions in the course of his life.  He has, perhaps, seen more revolutions than anyone in the history of the world.  He knew, while he lived, revolutions better than anyone.

Can Leon Panetta move the C.I.A. forward without confronting its past?  —  The Central Intelligence Agency typically fights distant enemies, but on May 21st its leaders were preoccupied with a local opponent.  A few miles from the agency's headquarters, which are in Langley, Virginia …

Stimulus Concession  —  Biden tells “Meet the Press” that “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought.  —  Backs away from the estimate that the funds could create or save 3.5 million jobs, instead promises 600,000 by the end of the summer.

Paul Krugman's fear for lost decade  —  As analysts and media hailed the tentative emergence of green shoots last week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman caused international shock with a prediction that the world economy would stagnate just as badly, and for just as long, as Japan's did in the 1990s.

WHEN IN DOUBT, BLAME OBAMA.... Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R) appeared on ABC's “This Week” this morning — no, I'm not sure why he was invited on either — and was asked about developments in Iran.  Naturally, the one-time presidential candidate said President Obama bears responsibility for what's transpired.

The Real Results?  —  This is hearsay - but under conditions of a police state coup, we are best advised to glean what information we can, hold it provisionally, and test it as time passes.  Here's what Kos Diarist Electronic Maji is hearing from Iranian journalist friends under lockdown:

Winds of Change?  —  Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the Middle East, and recently I was thinking of updating it with a new introduction.  It was going to be very simple — just one page, indeed just one line: “Nothing has changed.”  —  It took me two days covering the elections in Beirut to realize that I was dead wrong.