Senator Franken

Eight months after election day Minnesota finally has its second senator. Al Franken will no doubt bring great style and intelligence to the U.S. Senate and his contributions to the debates of the day will be refreshing and insightful. Norm Coleman can always revert to his old behavior--switching parties when he wants to run for a new office. It's time for a Democrat at the governor's desk and Norm may have it in him to, as Churchill put it, "re-rat."

Anyway, the Democrats now have 60 votes in the Senate and the Republicans can't stop anything by filibuster. The seat that is now Franken's has been held by Hubert Humphrey, Fritz Mondale and Paul Wellstone and Al will be keenly sensitive to their legacies. Had Paul Wellstone not died in that plane crash in 2002 Coleman would not have been in the Senate in the first place.

Rain Clouds

The Grand Supreme Most Excellent Poo-Bah of Iran is exposed as a corrupt and violent pol with the moral system of Luca Brazzi. The only possible symbol of this deranged regime is the young woman shot dead on the street in Tehran by some hiding coward, not the demented president in his London Fog zip-up windbreaker. I remember old Senator Sam Ervin at the Watergate hearings warning Nixon's goons in a line from Scripture, "God is not mocked!" he thundered, justice will be done. Today President Obama quoted again what he said are his favorite words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." A sweet green justice is about to fall on Iran as a cleansing holy rain and all the world will witness.

Iran Weekend

CNN's coverage has devolved to nerd-talk about how great Twitter is and the B-Squad they've had on today don't seem to notice that there is a near total lack of real information about events in Iran. They could be doing the red carpet at the Grammys for all the heft they bring to this job. At the same time we read that Walter Cronkite is in "grave condition." In more ways than one.

I just finished reading Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA. It was the CIA overthrow of a democratically elected prime minister in Iran in 1953 and the installation of the Shah that has Obama watching what he says right now. As someone said the other day, almost no American knows this history and almost no Iranian doesn't. You have to wonder what the boys and girls in Langely are up to tonight.

More

A late report from Nico Pitney says Ahmadinejad has landed in Yekaterinburg in Russia. What kind of president leaves his country during a crisis for a "previously scheduled regional meeting"? Has he fled? And why, of all places, to Yekaterinburg? That is where the Bolsheviks executed the Tsar and his family as the new Soviet Union was consolidating its power. Stay tuned.

Iran

Television and newspapers have not been a great help in understanding what is going on in Iran today. The authorities are resricticting reporters' movements and cancelling visas. The Internet and Twittering young Iranians have become the new Committees of Correspondence for this revolution. An election has been stolen by a Holocaust-denying freak and the corrupt religious powers that back him up. The Iranians want their country back and all of us who blog, comment, and follow their struggle can support them by simply posting our thoughts in the belief that we will be read on their screens in Iran. Pass it on. Yes they can.

Nico Pitney has been live-blogging for days on Huffington Post and is receiving minute-by-minute reports from Iran. I urge everyone to read him and to get on the web in a way that can help the brave young people in Tehran. If this disgusting regime is any where near the edge let's give them a strong shove.