Top Items:

Polling in Iran Shows Real Support for Ahmadinejad — The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey …
Discussion:
Behind the Numbers, FiveThirtyEight, Jules Crittenden, New York Times, Gateway Pundit, Wall Street Journal, The Daily Dish, Shadow Government, Open Left, The Moderate Voice, BBC, Abu Muqawama, Outside The Beltway, The Independent, Commentary, Daniel W. Drezner, Sister Toldjah, Agence France Presse, The Atlantic Politics Channel, Sadly, No!, The Mahablog, Registan.net, The Atlanticist and Obsidian Wings
RELATED:


Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came third — Iran's reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has called off a major rally to protest last Friday's election results, amid claims police had been cleared to open fire on protesters.


Shots fired at huge Iran protest — Huge crowds cheered Mir Hossein Mousavi when he appeared at the rally — Shots have been fired at a rally in Iran where hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating against last week's presidential election results.
Discussion:
Fox News, niacINsight, Time, Reuters, CBS News, PERRspectives, The Duck of Minerva, ShortWoman, Jihad Watch, Xinhua News Agency, On Deadline and Guardian


Iran's Disputed Election — Following up from last Friday's entry about Iran's Presidential Election, Tehran and other cities have seen the largest street protests and rioting since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Supporters of reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, upset at their announced loss …
Discussion:
The Spirit of Man


Ahmadinejad won. Get over it — Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Ahmadinejad's reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud. — They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad's 62.6 percent of the vote in this year's election …

No, Really. Ahmadinejad Won? — Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett have a new opinion piece up at Politico. “Ahmadinejad won. Get over it.” — The piece largely recycles arguments from Flynt Leverett's post-election interview with Spiegel online and their troubling …


Top Cleric Calls for Inquiry as Protesters Defy Ban in Iran
Discussion:
The Lede, Aljazeera, The Daily Dish, Feministing, Wall Street Journal, Danger Room, QandO, Gawker and Washington Post

Shots fired as 100,000 march through Tehran
Discussion:
New York Times, democracyarsenal.org, Matthew Yglesias, Democracy in America, Time, ATTACKERMAN and Hot Air

‘Extraordinary Amount of Wishful Thinking’ by US
Discussion:
Associated Press, MoJo Sections, American Prospect, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlanticist, The Confluence and Washington Post

Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran? — Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days.
RELATED:

Dennis Ross, Out As Special Envoy To Iran; Was He Ousted Because He's A Jew Or A Bit Hawkish On Nukes? — The news that Dennis Ross, long time State Department strategist and peace processor, is being bounced as special envoy to Iran comes from an article by Barak Ravid in the reliable (at least on these matters) Ha'aretz.
Discussion:
Commentary

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group — Percentage of “liberals” higher this decade than in early '90s — PRINCETON, NJ — Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal.
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, Commentary, Democratic Strategist, Hot Air and The Hill's Blog Briefing Room


Cheney: I Hope Panetta Was ‘Misquoted’ in Claiming My Wish for Attack — After the CIA director apparently told The New Yorker that he thinks the former vice president is crossing his fingers for another attack on America, Dick Cheney says he hopes his “old friend” didn't really say those words.
Discussion:
MSNBC
RELATED:

Obama rejects single payer — An effective rhetorical tack on Obama's campaign was casting his health care plan as a middle ground between private sector greed and a government takeover, and in an address to the American Medical Association today, he took a version of that tack in selling his public plan to that tough crowd:
RELATED:

Kristol: Memo to Conservatives — There have been very good grounds to criticize President Obama's foreign policy so far. There will be much more to criticize over the next three and a half years. — But he is our president. We could be at an historical inflection point in Iran.
RELATED:

The Iranian election: Barack Obama's cowardly silence
Discussion:
Hot Air, Washington Post, Washington Monthly, Nice Deb, The American Pundit, AMERICAN DIGEST, lgf 2.0, BuzzFlash.org, Swampland and CBS News

The Case for Financial Regulatory Reform — Over the past two years, we have faced the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial system failed to perform its function as a reducer and distributor of risk. Instead, it magnified risks, precipitating …
RELATED:

Exclusive: House Dems Planning Major Changes To Secret CIA Briefings Of Congress — In a move that could spark another fight with the GOP over CIA intelligence and secrecy, House Dems are quietly preparing to make major changes to the ways the CIA briefs Congress on covert actions …


Fareed Zakaria GPS Redeems CNN's Iran Coverage — A couple of years ago, I was at a party, locked deep in conversation with a former producer at CNN. And I recall that one of the things we had talked about was the media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina. I remember telling …
Discussion:
New York Magazine
RELATED:


Pol: Gorilla is ‘related’ to First Lady … A prominent South Carolina Republican killed his Facebook page Sunday after being caught likening the First Lady to an escaped gorilla. — Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday …

Pundit Glenn Beck on ‘Common Sense,’ More — Radio and television personality Glenn Beck was online Monday, June 15 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss his new book, “Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine.” — Chicago: Glenn, On June 6 you said" …
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, The Huffington Post, Think Progress, The New Republic and Get Energy Smart!

Realism and Iran — The brutal apparent fraud taking place in Iran puts the Obama Administration, and anyone who cares about both American security and human rights, in an extremely difficult position. For eight years, George W. Bush maintained that there was no tension, let alone contradiction …
RELATED:


Is Sonia Sotomayor Mean? — · The White House is fond of pointing out that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has more years on the bench, as a trial court and appellate judge, than any previous Supreme Court nominee. — With that record comes not just hundreds of written opinions, but thousands of oral arguments.

A Letter to the President from Joe Solmonese — Ed. Note: This morning HRC President Joe Solmonese sent a letter to President Barack Obama responding to the administration's brief that argues for the Defense of Marriage Act to be upheld in court. The letter follows and is available in PDF: