another abortion exception

The wonderful thing about the technological advances of the last 100 years or so is that the private words of our former presidents can be preserved for posterity. Or for the renewed humiliation of the American public decades after these men have left office. Of course, Nixon (with his paranoid penchant for recording his own criminal dealings) probably takes the cake in terms of providing a virtually unlimited amount of increasingly embarrassing insights into his private thoughts. The latest, of course, emerge from 150 hours of newly released Oval Office tapes in which our 37th presidents discusses his ambivalent feelings about Roe v. Wade:

There are times when an abortion is necessarily. I know that. When you have a black and a white. [Pause] Or a rape.

Can't wait for the release of the George W. Bush White House text messages.

if there were a major breach, we could annul the election--thank allah THAT didn't happen

The Guardian Council (unsurprisingly) declared that it would not nullify the vote. Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesperson for the Council, offered the following reassurance:

If a major breach occurs in an election, the Guardian Council may annul the votes that come out of a particular affected ballot box, polling station, district, or city. Fortunately, in the recent presidential election we found no witness of major fraud or breach in the election.

Well, that's a relief... Because some people might have thought that the voting discrepancy of 3 million in 50 cities that the government actually admitted might qualify as a "major breach" in "a particular affected ballot box, polling station, district, or city."

a method to khamanei's madness?

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the events in Iran is the increasingly bizarre behavior of the Guardian Council and Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, beginning, of course, the decision to tamper with the election in the first place. The Iranian government is not typically in the habit of directly rigging elections (after all, the "republic" bit of the Islamic Republic of Iran conveniently grants the Guardian Council the "responsibility" of weeding potential candidates who are not sufficiently committed to the cause). Furthermore, Mir-Hossein Mousavi was more or less greeted as the poor man's version of the more charasmatic Khatami, the reformist former president of Iran from 1997 to 2005 who bowed out of the 2009 election. Evidently, however, the Green Wave appeared to have attracted sufficient fervor to transform the unlikely Mousavi into a symbol threatening to justify rigging the election.

Yet more surprising still is the decision to pair the increasingly violent crackdown on the opposition protests with the admission that there were substantial "irregularities" (to the tune of 3 million votes or so) in the voting process. While this appears to be an attempt to tow some sort of middle ground, it is impossible to imagine that the Iranian government actually believes that admitting to such widespread (and almost certainly intentional) fraud will do anything other than bolster the opposition's resolve by further delegitimizing the election.

about all those extra voters...

Today's message from the Iranian leadership:

Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100 percent of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80 to 170 cities are not accurate — the incident has happened in only 50 cities.

Only 50 cities? And it just accounted for 3 million votes? Anyway, we shouldn't worry (as Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, pointed out), because it's just like that American election in 2000 and no one encouraged Americans to take to the streets (which perhaps begs the question "why the hell not?"). And yes, in case you were wondering, the Iranian governmen does appear to have just held up the Great Satan as a paragon of electoral virtue.

God, what are those opposition protesters complaining about... ?

mousavi: "ready for martyrdom"

In a distinct show of defiance, Mousavi, the improbable leader of the opposition, declared to his supporters on Saturday night that he as "ready for martyrdom." Such an unabashed act of resistence, in response to Khamanei's threats of violent repercussions against those who deny the legitimacy of the election (Mousavi also told his supporters that "protesting to lies and fraud is your right"), cements the opposition's resistance to the regime. It answers the question of whether the protesters would meekly step down with a resounding no. And it demonstrates that, despite his insider status, Mousavi has fully committed himself to his unlikely role as a would-be revolutionary.

Seeing that their leader continue to whole-heartedly encourage their demonstrations, protesters continued pouring into the streets on Saturday, despite the denial of official permission for these demonstrates and the not-so-oblique threats of violence that accompanied them. Unsurprisingly, the regime matched their threats with action; police confrontations resulted in at least 13 deaths yesterday.

supreme leader reverses again

In a not unexpected move (given the fact that most analysts believed his earlier conciliatory offer of a partial recount was primarily a bid to buy time and hope the opposition cools off), Khamanei reversed his position again in a speech delivered at Friday Prayers at Tehran University. He declared that:

The Islamic state would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people. The legal mechanism for elections would not allow any cheating.

So much for that whole partial recount thing. Of course, there was no way that any "partial recount" could have made a dent in Ahmadinejad's alleged 11 million margin of victory over Mousavi regardless.

On a more worrisome (but still not altogether surprising) note, Khamanei also made a not-so-veiled threat of violence against protesters by stating that opposition leaders would be "responsible for bloodshed and chaos."

The questions that now remain are whether Mousavi and his supporters will step down (given the extent and tenure of the protests this would seem unlikely) and how much violence the Iranian government is prepared to implement. After all, government violence against protesters might not necessarily have the desired result (forcing the opposition to step down). And it will certainly allow for more of those pesky comparisons to the policies of the Shah.

the democrats and gay marriage -- or why obama won't repeal doma

The Democratic Party's insistence on being pro-civil unions but anti-gay marriage becomes more puzzling each day. Perhaps there was some secret meeting back in the 90's when everyone agreed that Americans would never accept gay marriage and that, assuming the Democrats wanted to win elections, the Party (at least on the national level) should stick to the civil unions line. The results of the 2004 election seemed to more or less vindicate this idea (many analysts attributed Kerry's loss in Ohio to rural voters coming out in droves to vote for a proposed amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage).

And yet, at a time when 44% of Americans support gay marriage and even Sarah Palin agreed with Joe Biden's characterization of her position on civil unions being "that there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple" (although, to be fair, it's never clear how well Palin understands what, exactly, she is agreeing to at any given moment), this policy seems increasingly out-dated. Nevertheless, the Democrats' equivocation on the gay rights front continues to rear its ugly head. After filing a motion last week to dismiss a case challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (which rightfully outraged gay rights advocates at the time Clinton signed it into law), yesterday the president failed to include healthcare in a package of domestic partnership benefits for same sex couples.

After 8 years of watching Bush relentlessly pander to his base, it's pretty understandable that large parts of the LGBT movement (not to mention the rest of us who voted for Obama assuming he would, you know, back all those liberal social causes he claimed to support or whatever) are somewhat upset. No one (or at least few of us pragmatists) expects Obama to champion gay rights to the detriment of other priorities. Nonetheless, it would nice if he'd refrain from using the occasion of dismissing a case challenging DOMA on the grounds of insufficient legal standing as an excuse to launch into a whole-hearted defense of the overall merit of the Act.

just kidding guys, "we like everyone"

Ahmedinejad, apparently convinced by someone that referring to large swaths (somewhere in, let's say, the hundreds of thousands) of his countrymen as "dust" and disappointed soccer fans was perhaps not the best idea, attempted to soften the barbs of his former remarks by issuing the following somewhat conciliatory statement:

I only addressed those who made riot, set fires and attacked people. Every single Iranian is valuable. The government is at everyone's service. We like everyone.

Meanwhile, however, increasing speculation about the fact that ahmedinejad has not been seen in public since monday suggests that he is not quite so confident that everyone likes him.

iranian protests continue

The proverbial shit appears to be hitting the fan as Iranian protests continue into their fifth day. Sparked by the questionable results of Friday's election (the latest rumor claims that leaked election results actually show Mousavi as the landslide victor) that left the presidency in the hands of Ahmadinejad with an alleged victory granting him 62% of the vote (a puzzling outcome considering the fact that the four-candidate election was thought likely to force a run-off), these protests mark the largest antigovernment demonstrates since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Iranian government has responded in ways both expected (expelling journalists, arresting opposition leaders, blaming foreign elements for the disturbances) and less so (Ayatollah Khamanei has emerged from the shadows to publicly alter his initial steadfast support of the legitimacy of the election results). Naturally, Khamanei's decision to permit the investigation of the vote is likely an empty gesture intended to buy time in the hopes that the protesters will eventually cool off. However, such a public reversal from the country's Supreme Leader, who as the ultimate religious authority supercedes that of the president tends to remain above the political fray, may serve to cast further doubt on the legitimacy of the regime.

Of course, one aspect of these events remains refreshingly familiar. Ahmadinejad's predisposition toward offensive and inflammatory rhetoric marches on (apparently Mousavi supporters did not take well to having their protests compared to the actions of disappointed soccer fans, who would have thunk?)