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Chris Cillizza / The Fix:
SANFORD RETURNS! — Gov. Mark Sanford is set to return to South Carolina tomorrow. AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will return to the state tomorrow after spending the last five days hiking the Appalachian Trail, according to a statement released by his office this morning.
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Jimmy Orr / Christian Science Monitor:
Sanford disappears to hike Appalachian Trail (on Naked Hiking Day) — We're not suggesting that the formerly missing Governor of South Carolina specifically ditched his family and security detail to go hiking on Naked Hiking Day. But that's what he ended up doing.
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
Sanford Story Takes More Serious Turn — Late Monday evening, Gov. Mark Sanford's office revealed that he is hiking on the Appalachian Trail. — On the face of it, that solves the mystery. But this article from The State, South Carolina's main newspaper, suggests some more troubling possibilities to the story.
Discussion:
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The Huffington Post:
Sanford's Hiking Trail Got Stimulus Money He Opposed — Gov. Mark Sanford has spent a good part of South Carolina's past legislative session railing against, and even actively turning down, portions of Barack Obama's stimulus package. And when the session ended with Sanford losing his fight …
Discussion:
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Joe Klein / Swampland:
About Last Night — I've been receiving a steady stream of favorable emails from Iranian-Americans regarding my appearance on Larry King last night. They're delighted that I made it clear that Iran is different from the other countries in the region—better educated, more sophisticated …
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Scott Wilson / Washington Post:
Iran Unrest Reveals Split In U.S. on Its Role Abroad — Iran's post-election tumult has exposed the sharply divergent ways in which the Obama administration and its Republican opponents view the nature of American power and the president's role in speaking to political dissent outside the borders of the United States.
Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
KLEIN 1, MCCAIN 0.... John McCain has spent an enormous amount of time lately criticizing President Obama's approach to developments in Iran. On CNN last night, Larry King mentioned to Time's Joe Klein that McCain would be on the program tonight, and asked what Klein would tell the Arizona Republican.
Michael Calderone / Michael Calderone's Blog:
Obama calls on HuffPost for Iran question — In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran. — “Nico, I know you and all across the Internet …
Discussion:
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Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:
Why Obama's sudden news conference today? And what he'll say — You don't need to be a basketball-loving president of the United States to know that if you're trying to block opponents' shots in your end, you sure aren't increasing your own totals. You can't score points on D.
Discussion:
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Farnaz Fassihi / Wall Street Journal:
Son's Death Has Iranian Family Asking Why — TEHRAN—The family, clad in black, stood at the curb of the road sobbing. A middle-aged mother slapped her cheeks, letting out piercing wails. The father, a frail man who worked as a doorman at a clinic in central Tehran, wept quietly with his head bowed.
Washington Post:
At Least Nine Killed in Red Line Crash — The number of people killed in last night's deadly Red Line crash has risen to at least nine, Metro officials said this morning, shortly after five bodies were removed from the mangled wreckage. — The train that slammed into the back of another during …
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Thomas Joscelyn / Weekly Standard:
They Blame America Anyway — 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 …
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Josh Kraushaar / The Politico:
Rubio's curious Tweet — 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 …
Christopher Hitchens / Slate:
Iranian leaders will always believe Anglo-Saxons are plotting against them. … - There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran's foreign affairs. The deep belief that everything—especially anything in English—is already and by definition …
Discussion:
The Daily Dish, QandO, Israel Matzav, Right Wing News, Gateway Pundit, Conventional Folly and Nice Deb
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Jenny Booth / Times of London:
Iranian authorities scramble to negate Neda Soltan ‘martyrdom’ — The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of a student shot dead in Tehran to take down mourning posters as they struggle to stop her becoming the rallying point for protests against the presidential election.
Amanda Terkel / Think Progress:
Bolton Slams Obama For Being ‘Timid’ On Iran, Then Admits U.S. Options Limited Because Of Bush's Failures — Yesterday on Fox News, Sean Hannity and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton joined the right-wing chorus hitting President Obama's response to the Iranian election crisis.
Robert Tait / Guardian:
Iran bans election protest footballers — Ali Karimi, Mehdi Mahdavikia and two others are ‘retired’ after sporting green wristbands in World Cup qualifier in Seoul — Their gesture attracted worldwide comment and drew the attention of football fans to Iran's political turmoil.
David Kurtz / Talking Points Memo:
Testy — An animated and testy President Obama during this presser. Partly a function, I think, of him pushing back hard on two media/GOP narratives: one, that he's not been strong enough on Iran so that his recent harsher rhetoric amounts to a shift in his position; and, two …
Ben Smith / The Politico:
Clinton toils in the shadows — Back last fall, when Barack Obama sprang his surprise about naming former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, many people assumed she would be the Cabinet's brightest star — a celebrity at large on the world stage, the face of American foreign policy …
Jeff Stein / SpyTalk:
Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut — He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Obama's Political Operation To Launch Big Database Of Health Care Stories — In a major new effort to throw Obama's campaign apparatus into the push for health care reform, the White House's political operation is set to launch a massive new online data bank of thousands of health care stories …
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias, The Huffington Post, Washington Monthly, msnbc.com and The Political Carnival
Paul Kane / Washington Post:
Approval Ratings for Pelosi Hit a New Low — A month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's showdown with the CIA over interrogation techniques, just 38 percent of Americans approve of her job performance, while 45 percent disapprove, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday.
Discussion:
FiveThirtyEight
Alan Suderman / Washington Examiner:
Family sues after SWAT team raids their apartment by mistake — Kenyan immigrant Nancy Njoroge had been living in the United States for a year when a Montgomery County SWAT team burst into her Gaithersburg apartment at 4 a.m., handcuffed her and her two teenage daughters, and searched her apartment, court records show.
Discussion:
Outside The Beltway
Roll Call:
Ensign to Face the Music — Embattled Republican Will Address Colleagues Today — Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) is expected to address his GOP colleagues at their weekly luncheon today to try to turn the page on the high-profile sex scandal that has derailed his rising political career.
Al Kamen / Washington Post:
Dennis Ross Expands His Portfolio — Remember when the Washington Institute for Near East Policy announced Jan. 7 how happy they were that Dennis B. Ross, a senior official in the pro-Israel think tank, was going to get some kind of uber-job, “designed especially for him,” …
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